


Bastard in the Cradle

by LaughingVioletEyes (Kaliant)



Series: Lyarra of Winterfell [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Complicated Relationships, Fictional Religion & Theology, Food Porn, Gen, Politics, Traveling, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2019-08-23 05:51:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16613135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaliant/pseuds/LaughingVioletEyes
Summary: The Mad King and his gallant prince had caused Westeros to fester with resentment. Their insults spurred the nobility to choose a new king and bled the realm to sit him on the Iron Throne. With the Dragons now dead or gone the victorious plot for their prosperity.In the midst of this upheaval, Ashara Dayne’s babe lives. Praise the Old Gods.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been spinning in my head for over a year and is self-indulgent. A lot of my structure comes from the Blood of Dragons MUSH on Westeros.org, research, and the lovely folks who moderate and contribute to ASOIAF University on Tumblr, who have turned me from a simple watcher of Game of Thrones to an avid consumer of fantasy, history, and meta.

She was taught to kneel before the heart tree, a weirwood crying its blood, and pray. Pray for the health and prosperity of her family, for good crops, good winds, and mercy. She was taught to give gifts, to be reverent of all life, and be sober at death, though it was not the end.

For those who followed the Old Gods, there was no end to your spirit. When you die you reincarnate again and again. It did not matter the life you had lived before. When you die your soul is reborn— into a plant, into an animal, into a person. It was the will of the gods that decided what you became.

She had not held to any belief in her past life. There was no need to have faith in any god: she, through pure will, would endure. This had held her through her parents’ divorce as a child, her time at university, and failed relationships.

It wasn’t because she didn’t think they existed—miracles and luck came from somewhere—but she knew gods did not care. They had their own concerns, and any help they received was on a whim. Genocides, rapes, murders, thefts. If god existed, she had asked her grandmother once, why did they allow such horror? But that life was nothing but poppy dreams now, and she knew better than to question so openly.

She would always end her routine early and look through the weirwood at the places she could not yet go. She could see as far as the trees would take her: forests and seas, villages and cities with mighty castles.

When she rises from prayer, she asks silently why she was this way, in this world, when others weren’t. The heart tree just cried silently in response.

She had not believed in gods or magic. Yet here she was, in a strange land capable of even stranger things.


	2. Chapter One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Camille lives, thank the Old Gods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has been spinning in my head for over a year and is self-indulgent. A lot of my structure comes from the Blood of Dragons MUSH on Westeros.org, research, and the lovely folks who moderate and contribute to ASOIAF University on Tumblr, who has turned me from a simple watcher of Game of Thrones to an avid consumer of fantasy, history, and meta. House Dayne's words are definitely not my creation, either. Enjoy!

There is a moment right before your death when you know this is the end. For Camille, her end was the bombing. She was in Lebanon treating refugees. One child she was accustomed to had come into the clinic. They had trained Camille over and over to identify risks — but with the child…. she had not suspected. The boy had come many times before but this time, but there was no question to ask or a person in need. She looked into his eyes, still as stone, and her heart hammered. Camille hardly a looked at his chest before her sight melted to black and her body went alight in a pain so horrific Camille knew she would go mad.

What was a burning pain turned into a wet, pressing feeling, and her chest burned as she gasped for air, screaming. The first thing Camille saw when she finally opened her eyes was the look of a crying face. God, Camille had thought ashamedly, when she first saw her.

Camille realized that God was, in fact, her mother Ashara, and she was her infant. Her initial months in this life were painful, melancholic, and filled with confusion. This new world was far different from Earth. The colors more vivid, the food richer, the jewels finer, the sun brighter. It was only when one of Camille’s nannies- she had several- had given her a shiny piece of metal, did she see herself as she was then: a baby, sweet and dimpled with dark curly hair, olive skin, and lilac eyes. Camille hoped she would not have sight issues later and had wailed for days after she saw it. What she had thought before was a dream was, in fact, a reality.

The attention Camille gave to Ashara was as near to worship as she had ever known to her in her adulthood. She preferred to be with her mother than without her. It was her face she knew beyond all others, and Camille knew now why babies loved their mothers the most. Ashara was the most beautiful person she had ever seen even if she was so young. She had purple eyes, though darker, with the same dark curly hair and a dimpled smile. Camille could not look away.

Ashara’s breasts answered Camille’s cries, or should her mother had been away from the rooms, her nurse who had milk just as good. Shamefully, she always took it. It was frustrating to be this way, unable to do anything for herself, but with the first pain of hunger, it was Camille’s only option. She could not tell them what she wanted anyway — every word she made was babble rewarded with smiles and cooing. When Ashara was in her rooms or Camille’s nursery she would undo her gown, hold her in her arms and look at the sea and sing until she dozed off. Camille loved her. As her love for Ashara grew Camille recognized that one repeated sing-song tone: Lyarra. That was her name now.

Camille had stopped breastfeeding early, at one. Now more active, Ashara would bring Camille to open spaces where other women and girls would have their children and dressed in sheer linens, shiny silks, and gold and gems. In these places, she would lie in her mother’s arms until her small body gained strength, and then they allowed Camille to crawl and play with the others while her mother and the women sat and sewed. It was amongst velvet pillows Camille found she could do a curious thing.

All the ladies around Ashara had a pet: dogs, cats, and even one woman had a monkey in a cage that some great sized man carried. One puppy, similar to a Dalmatian, had been laying on her mother’s lap, enjoying scratches behind the ear. Then suddenly it was Camille who felt it. Her mother’s bright yellow satin dress was in view along with her ringed fingers and nothing had ever felt so good in her life, she did not want it to stop- until it did, as one of her nurses had picked her up, thinking Camille had become tired in her shock.

Camille had named the puppy Spot, and through him, Camille found the entire world beyond her room, her mother’s room, and a few balconies. Her mother seemed delighted with the puppy and found himself in the pile of pets she adored with silver collars and purple gems. Spot could go where she could not, and so when her nurse would lay her for sleeping in a canopied cradle, Camille would slip to him. She would be at her mother’s feet when she went to other rooms and looked over parchments, or sewed with women who looked near to tears, and spoke to a flurry of people that came in and out of a room, where her grandmother Ariadne, a woman with the same skin and inky curls, sat all seeing. Camille could walk with her mother, and her ladies, and see a great and wide waterfall that poured into a great crater where their castle sat in the center of. Smaller islands dotted this lake and there were two mighty bridges that connected the shining white castle to the town of pink-hued buildings. Camille lived in a fantasy world, she was certain.

She had soon discovered that this ability, to slip, was much harder than she thought. Puppies and kittens were easy, and so were the little birds in the window sills but the larger birds Camille saw would shake her away, leaving her to admire the sky from afar. All of her time trying to get over the bridge, however, had left her tired, and led her handmaid, Ypolita, to call her a dreamer. Ashara did not approve of such things, and Ypolita swore not to say it again. Though Ypolita was young- she seemed to be the same age as her mother- Ashara commanded and spoke to her strongly she would paint herself on the wall. But that was only with her mother. With Camille, she giggled and hugged and played, to the irritation of her other nurses. It was through her she first learned of things: Starfall, Camille’s home, was the center of House Dayne, and Lords of the Torrentine, the great river that ran fast into the ocean outside her windows. Her mother was Ashara Dayne, daughter of the Lady of this castle. Camille still didn’t understand why Ypolita had to act like an abused cat when her mother spoke to her.

As she was “the child of someone of great importance,” Ashara had said, “Great care should be given to her education”. It was a strange way to talk about yourself. They taught her typical things for a child: shapes, colors, words. She was taught her house’s words, As Sure As Dawn, and how to spell her name. To cope with the change of this life, Camille knew she quickly mastered what she could as a two-year-old in speaking and reading Dornish, a melodic, emotional language that rolled like Spanish and moved on to the Common Tongue, and even High Valyrian, to her mother’s delight. Ashara seemed proud to have such a smart daughter and Camille could only smile as her mother had no clue to just how smart she was, or how…talented.

It was right before Camille’s second nameday when she was told something curious by her handmaid. Camille had always been curious about her father, and when she had asked Ypolita, her favorite nanny, she did not need to be pressed to talk.

“Your father is a wolf who had fell in love with your mother at a grand tourney,” she had sighed dreamily.

It was no surprise to Camille that she arrived nine months later that was something common in her time too. What had shocked her was what at what a tourney was. They seemed stuck in the Dark Ages here from the clothes, to the food, to the people. The story had depressed her some time until her mother had convinced her to tell her of her woes. Camille had told her mother in bed about her father the wolf. The reaction had not been pleasant. Ashara had put Ypolita to tears with her anger. Ypolita would be watched by Essine her main nanny and every other woman around her from that day forward.

Time passes and in the early morning Ashara gave Camille kisses told her that “she must stay in her room and be good for now”. She agreed but slipped from Spot to her mother’s fussy cat, to the birds, until she looked down into the great hall where her grandmother sat emotionless and still as stone. There was a chorus of wails as they placed trunks in rows of seven before the Lady Ariadne. It was the men and women left, bloody and defeated, who placed them there. She cried when she saw what was in them. Bones. Wails and cries had come up, as a man dressed in their colors had come, limping yelling out words Camille wished she understood.

Soon enough the group of people in the castle seemed to explode in rapid activity. She had not learned enough words to know what her mother said as she had come to her room, but Camille knew it wasn’t good. Ashara’s face was dark with eyes red and puffy as she tore jewels from her hair and ripped her sleeves. Her women in identical lilac dresses took the ruined clothing she wore away, and draped her in a fathomless black gown, embroidered only in minimal silver detail.

They dressed Camille in black too, her dressed of bold colors gone, replaced small jewels were in her hair with hundreds of gold pins with black pearls. Ypolita, her handmaid, had dressed her, all kisses and smiles and wet eyes. People had died. No one would tell her what happened, and it frightened her, but she knew it was war. There were no more trips to the balconies and sunny spots, and they carefully hid Camille in her room where she only saw her mother and grandmother. She was a prisoner in her own nursery none of her nannies let her leave her room.

There was a lull in the days as her nannies entertained her, dealing with growing teeth and trying to walk again. Camille enjoyed the pillows and sweets and puppies and kittens but wanted to know so badly what went on. Ashara had still kept her eyes on Ypolita, and so she was quiet. Camille had found out soon enough as the servants’ whispers turned to talk between each other. 

“It was the wolves who did this,” they said. The new king had forced them all to a bitter submission. Soon enough Camille was brought back into the courts of her mother on balconies and patios, and she was glad of the heat and light. But this did not last long as word had come from by one of their own.

“The Wolf was coming,” the servants had near screamed. He had found Ser Arthur, they said, and the Lady Yadira makes her way with him down the valley. But to each other, they spoke much more bluntly. She followed her mother as she went about her day, and there was always one question: Had the Wolf come to claim his bastard?


	3. Chapter Two

Camille realizes that when her mother said she was the child of someone of great importance, Ashara meant her father. Though they come in such a small party, near the entire household greeted them, a procession of people with a mask of politeness and underneath it, hostility. Though the man Ypolita identified as her father was deathly pale and tall, there was a shorter man, along with a deep skinned woman who was their cousin, Yadira.

Ashara had been protective of Camille since his arrival, and she hosted every meal, except for dinner, in her rooms with her ladies. She wondered if her grandmother objected to that as Ashara seemed to help her run the place. Essine urged her to her chair wearing a honey-colored samite gown with gold jewelry wherever she could hold it. Coos greeted her and Camille said hello to each with her near perfect curtsey and a smile. She loved them: they gave her smiles and kissed on the head to her progress in her courtesies. Camille looked around the table.

To the right was Avya who was Essine’s older sister, a Dayne by birth and marriage, both of lower branches of the family, unlike Essine, who married a bannerman of the family. They shared the same auburn hair and onyx eyes and full-lipped smile.  Juana had a similar smile but was a Sand, like she was, Ashara’s youngest great aunt’s child from her visit to Lys, and she had almost all of her father’s look with hair and skin white and purple eyes. Her mother eventually married him, but long after she was born, and it was apparently a scandal. Juana was blameless in this and married a prominent knight to the family and had seven kids. Calamya was a child and only twelve, and her favorite. She had dark brown hair and warm brown eyes with olive skin. She was from a bannerman’s family, the Ozens. They had moved up in the world, and her mother’s favor was key for them. Lyonor married a cousin of her mothers, and was black of hair and eyes, with saturnine skin. She was from her late grandfather’s lands, a minor lord’s daughter who married high up enough. Lyonor was her mother’s best friend and often was the one who caught her when she attempted a jailbreak from her nursery. Lastly were Catalena and Bice: sisters the same age of a great-great uncle busy off beyond Volantis, where ever that was. They couldn’t look less alike, one pale, soft indigo eyes and honey hair and the other who looked more like Calamya. The sisters argued frequently and were four years older than her mother and were currently betting over who could find the best husband. Camille thought they were funny.

Camille would always sit to her mother’s left, and get fussed over as Marsali and her ladies would help her with her courtesies- how to hold a fork, pick up pomegranates, and other things. She and her mother were often in their bed robes- her six ladies, and their chatelaines Essine and Beretta, dressed in their finery, ready to go on an errand on command. The handmaids serve in lilac and white gowns, or silver, if they are hers. This morning there was mint tea with bread flat and round, and two dozen dishes of different olive oils, butter, honey, jams, pastries, and dried fruit.

Today there was another guest: Yadira. She had deep skin and very curly hair wound up in gold ropes and a rich turquoise gown with lace sleeves. She wore more modest jewelry and sat directly across from her mother for breakfast. Yadira was another cousin of her mother with a Dayne parent from one of her great aunts and uncles, who came to her mother’s breakfasts soon after her arrival. Her mother’s chatelaine, Beretta, a woman in her fifties with salt and pepper hair and Dyane blue-violet eyes quickly introduced her, and so Camille gave her a curtsey and smile too. 

“I see she has your grace Nasha,” she gave a sweet smile people gave children, her eyes crinkling at the edges. “But the eyes,” she murmured, raising a brow at Ashara.

Her mother gave a beaming smile, still in only her sheer nightgown and her bed robe. “Yes. Lilac. Only grandmother had them.” Yadira and Avya exchange a glance.

Camille ate as man pastries as she could while they talked, a soft lull happening as Marsali poured her lemonsweet, or lemonade, as she hated mint tea. Ashara rolled her eyes at Camille’s lack of taste for it- she loves it.

“Not too much, it is so early. And no more sweets. Eat your fruit.” Her mother raised a perfectly plucked brow when she pouted at her, Ypolita removing her preferred foods to shriveled up pears.

“They are too sour,” she complained, but Ashara paid her no mind.

“She is a baby, all they like are sweets Nasha.” Her mother rolled her eyes at Lyonor. She spoiled all of her children.

“Everyone likes sweets,” Bice nodded, sipping her tea.

“The problem is that the babies do not know how to stop.” Beretta had a dozen children, and three dozen grandchildren. She would know.

“It is not only infants with no control,” Her mother’s snide comment made her ladies look to each other, except for Avya, who looked right at her mother and seemed used to this.

“I hoped auntie had spoken to you of it,” Ashara dropped the bread and jam to her plate.

“Does my mother tell me anything?” Her ladies stayed silent in their answer.

“Nasha,” Avya has a soothing tone, looking at Camille and then Ashara. Oh, Camille realized, it must be about her father. Ashara had forbidden her from anywhere else but the suite of rooms that were her mother’s and her nursery since he arrived.

“I see no reason why I must be quiet about it. He comes with Arthur near dead and another babe begging for a wet nurse.” Ashara’s voice cracks and Camille stops eating her bread to turn to her. She hated when her mother cried. Camille noticed Yadira wince out of the corner of her eye.

“Avya, Lyonor you know. You know- you were there! You saw. He swore-”

“We know what he swore, but Nasha, now is not the time for grievances,” Lyonor motioned to Calamya, who looked with a frown and motioned for Ypolita to bring her around. She was to be her nanny today.

“You know what northrons are,” Bice frowned, looking at Catalena, who preoccupied herself with her food.  “And besides, we are in no position now to argue.”

Avya nodded at that. Ashara stiffened, eyes going watery and pink. “Let him have that child and his wife and her babe too. Let them keep their problems cousin,” Essine sniffed, waving a hand. Camille soaked it in as she was gently pulled up from her seat.

“She will stay right here Ypolita!” her maid shrunk back to the wall, Yadira with a small frown as she observed. Calamya, determined, gave her a bright smile. “Arra can stay with us here, I will take care of her Lady Ashara.”

Camille was taken to a seat on the other end of the table as their voices lowered, but not low enough for her not to hear.

“They only cause us pain, you know,” Catalena added. She gulped down three cups of tea before speaking. Ashara smacked her hands on the table, bursting to tears. She rose from her seat and everyone else did in response, following her.

“Mamma,” she called. Essine caught her before she made for the door, but it was Calamya who calmed her down. Camille tried to make herself to stop breathing so hard.

“Do you want to play come into the castle with me?”

No. she wanted her mother. But as her mother’s door to her bedchamber closed, she realized a game would have to do.

Later the next day, Ashara had her dressed in the specially made clothes of rich cloth. A sheer muslin shift, with fine linen stockings, with a white-on-white brocade undergown lined in silver satin with matching slippers, and a silver-and-white damask outer robe lined in the same satin as before. They put a string of white pearls in her hair, in her ears, neck, wrists and half of her fingers. She felt so pretty, but could barely move. Ypolita thought she looked “Very fine”. Camille felt like a doll.

Essine came to her nannies to retrieve her, smiling wide. She was to take Camille to her grandmother’s solar. The hall was empty of servants leaving only guards. Camille was to meet her father, the Wolf, today. Everyone around her seemed nervous about the meeting when they could stop talking about her uncle Arthur. He was in his rooms and guarded, from what she saws of the armored men outside of his chambers. Camille was not bold enough to go find him through the little birds. When she asked Essine about him one of her other nannies close behind them let out a soft gasp. Essine said he needed much rest. It was her nice way of saying he was a prisoner.

“There is no reason to be nervous Arra.” Essine dressed well today, with more jewelry on, and finer clothes.

“I am not Essie!” Camille felt indignant, looking up at her as they walked. She tugged at her sleeves. Maybe she was a little nervous. Her mother didn’t want her around him. Maybe he wasn’t like the stories Ypolita told her.

“Do you remember your words and curtsey?”

“Yes Essie, I have practiced with you remember?”

“Sometimes it gets hard to remember.” She knew to not roll her eyes, and Essine gave a chuckle.

At the door of her grandmother’s solar, Essine nodded to the usher, and he entered the room. She had only seen it through the little birds, but Camille that she loved this room. It was a bright, but airy space: wooden screens filtered the light into shapes, with floor to ceiling with books all around, with many chairs, settees, and tables about on Myrish carpets. Ypolita said they were expensive and Camille didn’t doubt it. Everything she saw was high-quality craftsmanship compared what the servants used.

The room was divided in half. On the left was her mother, and uncle Alistair, and her Aunt, Cerenna. Her uncle stood in a fine damask robe that flowed in deep blue and her Aunt Cerenna a gown of bright blue velvet and covered with as many jewels as she could carry. This was usual for her- she rarely visited her, but was as beautiful as the rest of her family with light blonde hair and pale blue eyes. The only difference was that her skin was pale where her uncle had olive skin and blue-violet eyes.  Last was her mother Ashara, who stood stunning as she always was, but stiff. Camille knew a fake smile when she saw one. Though Ashara usually put her hair in elaborate styles picked with gold pins of jewels and ropes of gold, today she styled it with only a series of gold chains that went across the forehead with pearls and little purple gems. Her hair curled past her hips, brushing an outfit similar to hers.

Ariadne was unimpressed by their matching outfits. She sat as she ever was in the hall, stoic, eyes going between her and her mother and finally to her father.

Camille looked to the right.  The man was tall but lean. He wore clothes the color of copper, no doubt supplied from her uncle.  When she looked at him, she saw a pale and sunburnt face but with straight brown hair to his collar, and a serious, and withdrawn look.  His face was plain, except for his eyes, which were grey. Camille felt… disappointed. This was the boy that her mother fell in love with? He didn’t seem the type that moved mountains in a woman, and a girl least of all.

She did as she practiced for a whole two weeks and curtseyed when they were introduced. Camille looked to her mother after, and that brought out a laugh. Behind and to the side of her father was a shorter man introduced as Lord Howland Reed. He seemed warm enough, more than her father, and she smiled at him. Lord Reed seemed amused by the baby before him. She didn’t let silence settle after the laugh.

“Are you for true my papa, the wolf?” Lord Eddard brows go up.

“Aye, I am your father, little one.” He had a nice deep voice that brought a smile to her face.

“Then I want to kiss you, papa.” Camille held out her arms as the people in the room cooed and laughed. He seemed moved by her, reaching down and bringing her up in the heights of the room with him. Camille smiled at him, and Eddard’s face seemed to morph into a slight smile then back to a mask.

“You have grown so. Your mother said you were a small babe.”

“Well, I like lemon cakes.” There was a puzzled expression on his face.

“Aunt Cerenna says lemon cakes make you grow.”

She could hear her aunt laugh in response. “It is true my lord.”

Her father gives a sad little smile to her as Camille placed a kiss on a slightly scruffy beard. Looking around she could see her uncle now holding her mother’s hand. Ashara’s lips pursed, and her free hand tense on her side. They spoke to too fast for her — Camille learned enough common tongue but not as much as she had learned of Dornish.

“She is a sweet girl, Lord Eddard, and with your face, too.” Her grandmother’s deep commanding voice seemed sharper.  Camille looked at Lord Eddard’s face. She looked nothing like this man. He looked back at Camille in the same way, inspecting.

“Mamma,” she calls, and Ashara rips her arm from her uncle to grab her- luckily Essine grabs her first from her father to hand her to her mother. Ashara holds her far tighter than usual.

“This must overwhelm her. Arra is just a babe. I will have her put for a rest,” Ashara excuses. She cannot see any of her family’s faces, but there is silence.

“Very well.” Her grandmother’s voice is final, and it ushers them out.

Camille in her mother’s bedchamber soon, on her favorite settee to staring out at the sea. She sings and does not mention her father at all. It continues this way, being secluded with Ashara unless it is time for meals, where Camille doesn’t even get to go. She does not see her father again for the next five days, but she doubts he would be welcome should he try to.

It had been two weeks since Lord Eddard and his party arrived, and now he was leaving to head back north. Camille watched as her mother become more wretched, wringing her hands and letting her play in her bed instead of her nursery. She was still in her linen nightgown, with her toys and her rockers, when Essine came into the rooms.

Ashara dressed in a sheer muslin night shift at midday, a bed robe of light linen with gold work over her as Camille dozed with Ernatta, one of her nannies. The guards in bronze armor stepped aside, and when her usher, another Dayne cousin, whispered to Calamya. Her mother was having her feet massaged and hair oiled into an elaborate style when she came back in, announcing her chatelaine. Ashara kissed Essine on both cheeks in greeting.

“Did you see the arrangement?”

“Yes, your mother was clear.”

“And?”

“A household of fifty, for now, with a promise to enlarge it should she make it past six.”

“Fifty?”

“Nasha half would be her guard-”

“What about the other child?”

The ladies looked to Ashara, and she pulled Essine to a window on the far side of the chamber. She wanted to be near her mother to find out what she was talking about, but as always her ladies were far too efficient for that and quickly distracted her with lemonsweet, sweets, and if she smiled, a sip of strong wine. When Ashara came back, Camille had dozed off again in Lyonor’s arms when the guards on the door stepped aside. Calamya hardly had any time to announce her uncle as he came in right behind her.

Though he walked with a limp, her uncle Alistair was tall, over six feet, and intimidating. He never smiled, even at her. Or even her aunt.  He and her mother glared at each other in greeting. Everyone in the room except the guards stands and bow and curtsey in an echo of “My Lord”.

“Ali.”

“Nasha.”

They hold each other’s stare; the ladies are silent and watching.

“Leave.”

Everyone curtseys and bows again and heads for the door. Ashara does not like that. “You will all stay. These are my chambers.”

They stop, and with an exasperated chuckle, Alistair waves his hands. “I care not either way.”  Everyone is close to the wall now.

“Good.”

She feels nervous now, with her uncle here, and so does everyone else, looking between her mother and uncle. No one dares say a word.

“You had told me you had wanted Lyarra to go north, sister, and yet now you hide her away.”

“I wanted us both to go north, as Starks.”

Her uncle sighs. “This is the best option.”

“Being torn for your mother and taken as a hostage is the best option?”

“Lord Eddard is now Lord Stark and rules all the North. The King proclaims him as his brother. She is his daughter and will enjoy that. We will benefit from that.”

“She is his bastard Ali, play no games with me. You know how they treat their children beyond Dorne.”

“Then you should have thought of that before you-”

“Cousin,” Essine gives a sharp look. Her uncle’s stare is hard. Camille looks at every tense face. He had gone away to the war and came back with a limp, and bitter too. Unlike her aunt or Grandmother, he never visited her. He looks at her, with blue-violet eyes, hard and unmoving.

“You and Arthur have always made mistakes, and I am always the one to clean them up. Now I am the one who is wrong?”

“My daughter is no mistake.”

“Nasha you knew better. You knew better, and you still went along with this folly. My niece will go with her father Lord Stark. It will help remind him to save our brother’s life. You remember Arthur don’t you?”

“Arra is a babe.” Ashara bit her lip, coming toward her.

“This babe will help our brother. I know you hate it, so when you see Arthur again, be sure to tell him how it is his fault. If he had not helped his dear Prince Rhaegar steal the little She-wolf, mayhaps you would be your precious northron’s wife instead of here, in this shame.”

“You are no septon yourself!”

“My dalliances has never been so fruitful, Nasha.”

“No, I do not think they would be.”

They stare at each other again, her uncle now close to her, and her mother halfway blocking her.

“Lyarra will go with her father.”  His voice was low and calm and held his arms out to her. Camille froze. She would not go to him, and her mother pushed in front, knocking his arms out of the way.

“My daughter will stay here, with me,” Ashara’s voice was hard and demanding, like her grandmother’s. Alistair gave her an unblinking stare.

“She will go with her father, and you will beg him to convince the king to spare Arthur’s life. Then - if the gods see fit to give you more sense Nasha - you will give up your poppy dreams and marry a dornishman, as you should have always planned!”

Her mother goes bright red at that, her eyes bulging.

“Essie, arrange the travel. They leave in the morning.”

“Lyarra will not leave this castle!” Ashara’s voice is shrill, and her skill is a deep red.

“It is mother’s wish, it is my wish, and I shall do it!” Her uncle’s voice booms making her tremble.

“No.” Her mother’s voice is loud too, yelling. Ashara‘s hands are in fists, tight.  Alistair’s jaw flexes and they soon dissolve to screams. Ashara does not move from in front of her.

“She will come with me now. Release her Essine. I tire of this.”

They both start to yell. Camille finds Ashara is a fighter too — she is so close to her uncle Camille thinks she might even swing. Spot doesn’t like the yelling, however, and barks, and pulls at Alistair’s pants. She tries to slip in, but he is too angry, and she is too scared, and she is unsuccessful. Spot snaps one, twice at her uncle, and she tries again, this time in him, moving away as fast as she could. Instead, uncle kicks her so hard she cannot move or breathe, and she screams in pain in her body. Camille, scared, more scared than flying for the first time or experiences her first death, and then the dogs bark, cats hiss, and her mother’s birds screech.

Alistair backs away alarmed. Inky black spots touch the sides of Camille’s vision as she thrashed about, and her mother screamed for her maester.

No one noticed Spot laying so still.


	4. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lyarra travels up to the Marshes.

Camille woke to the sounds of the castle. For the past few days it had been her mother’s weeping, but this morning she found mother speaking to her ladies, fully dressed in gold and silk, and giving orders in her room. The moment that Lyonor saw her blink her eyes, she nodded to her mother who went to her and gathered her up, the scent of sweet perfume coming before Ashara sat on the bed.

“Little Arra. You are up so early,” she cooed, holding her in her lap. Camille rubbed her eyes in response. She had been tired– her small body demanded it no matter how much she wanted to stay awake.

Her mother made a gesture, and Ernatta, one of her rockers, came forward with a silver platter of foods taken from a groom to break her fast.

“Little Lady Arra,” Ernatta smiled. “There is lemon sweet, eggs, bread and apricot jam, and apple tarts.” Camille couldn’t hide her smile. They are all her favorites. Her mother must be distraught to give them all to her at once.

Ashara puts her in a chair at a smaller table and watches her eat with a stiff smile. Camille’s grandmother had decided she would go far from her mother, and there was no changing that now. She had heard her cry through the nursery door– she didn’t even need another puppy or a bird to see– but she seemed fine for now.

 Camille watched as her and her mother’s ladies folded her clothes to great chests and called for grooms and pages to have them corded and sealed. Her mirror is wrapped and taken, her rugs rolled and tied and carried out. Her lace hangings and curtains stay on the windows and so does her bedding. Her mother looks near to ears when Camille turns back to her.  She puts a finger into one of her curls.

“Arra, today you go on a great journey with your father. Do you know what that means?” Camille could see Lyonor and Avya linger on the wall. She knew it meant she was going far from all she knew in this short life. Camille was very nervous about this- she had only begun to adjust.

“Yes, we are going north.” Ashara gave a look then, her previously controlled face melting into a frown.

“More than that,” she insists. “You are going to the North. It is there your father rules half of Westeros, and answers only to the king himself.”

“But it is north?” Ashara gave a slight chuckle then, eyes glistening.

“As far north as you can go.”

“That is far away.”

“Yes. But you are lucky for you– you will not be alone,” She cocks her head to the side a bit as her mother’s smile fades. “Essine will be with you, and so will Ernatta.”

“Ypolita comes as well?” Her mother’s lip thins at the mention of her chamberer’s name.

“And her too. Best of all Theryse and Aurelia will be with you. You remember your cousins?”

Theryse and Aurelia were Ernatta’s and Essie’s daughters. They were fun enough for toddlers. Camille nods in response and watches as Lyonor gives other women and men in the room bag of dark velvet and lilac wax.

“Yadira will also be with you. She will be your Lady Mistress. You are to listen to her, Arra. You cannot run off once you leave Starfall. It is dangerous, do you understand?” She nods again, feeling only slightly guilty at all her attempts to break free of her nursery to explore the castle. Her mother gives her one last smile.

“Finish your food, and then Marsali will dress you. You leave soon my love.”

Her departure with her father was nothing as spectacular as his arrival. The household had all arrived to see them off, but there was relief at their departure, judging by their smiles. As she went through the halls to the yard, every servant and person in the castle to say goodbye. In the yard were her grandmother Ariadne, her uncle Alistair, her aunt Cerenna, and only one of her cousins– sickly little Maryssa was still in bed, but Balthazar, who was only a year older than her, was there. She rarely saw him, but he gave a grin in goodbye anyway that made her grin back. Her aunt Allyria, with honey like hair, was there as well and gave more mature wishes, and kissed her cheek.

There is a large mass of people: hundreds of armored men swarm the yard, flirting with servants while waiting to depart. They are on horses and on foot, and some are just in livery or her family’s colors. There are about thirty-five wagons from what she could count– guards at the front and back; the valuables near the front with boxes chained to the sides of wagons as well. Yadira sees them through the crowd and Ashara hands her off to her with a look that has a meaning she didn’t understand.

While Eddard speaks to her family, Yadira points out where her linens and cutlery are stored along with her glassware, salt cellars, and spice pots. She mentions the expensive mahogany furniture and picks her up to let her touch them. As they pass through the crowd, everyone gives her little smiles and winks. There in that wagon was all her satins, velvets, and samites; the next has her hangings, sheets, and pillows; in one wagon was all of the Myrish rugs her mother loved. Her bed is there too along with several down mattresses and its rope. There are two wagons just for her tapestries, too.

Yadira is pleased when Camille can point out all the animals the servants are carrying: hen, capon, duck, geese, sheep.  There is even a cow, and Yadira moos to make her laugh. She insists on touching every one of them, her senses still so new, and Yadira calls for a servant to bring a basin of water for her hands. She is distracted from that by the sight of large birds in their special wagon with leather covers over it. Yadira says she isn’t to touch them.

“They are for hawking, little one.” Her father’s voice is startling. Yadira gives a curtsey with her in her arms. Lord Eddard dismisses it as soon as she rises

“We depart soon my lady.” Yadira is skittish around him and makes apologies. Camille decides to distract them.

“I touched a sheep!”

Her father gives her a smile, breaking the watchful look he had given Yadira, though it is a sad one.

 “They are soft aren’t they?” She smiles and laughs and agrees in her toddler way, and Eddard is more than happy to please her for one moment before directing her governess to the wheelhouse so they can depart. She did not even get to say goodbye to her mother.

The wheelhouse was bumpy and jarring on the road. They rode at the beginning of the procession, with Eddard and Lord Reed ahead of them. In her wheelhouse she played with Theryse and Aurelia, her ladies carefully adjusting them as they went on the road so they wouldn’t hurt themselves. The wet nurse in the wheelhouse who held her brother Jon was alert and held him carefully as he slept soundly. Ashara insisted he was her _half-brother_ , but she recognized bitter and hurt, and decided he would just be ‘Baby Jon’. Yadira said aloud that he was a peaceful and Camille agreed. If she were still his size, she would scream the entire ride.

Camille had quickly become bored and asked Yadira and Ernatta a hundred questions on their trip. What bird was that? What color was that brick? Why are the wells made that way? When can they eat? She felt bad as they grew exhausted and irritable but answered all the comments patiently. But she could not complain about the view. The Torrentine Valley, or just the Valley, was stunningly beautiful.  The meadow was a lush green, with rolling hills and colorful flowers. The mountains stood tall and colossal as their backdrop, the river reflecting the bright light of the sun.

At every stop, it was Yadira who smoothed over the looks of hate from her grandmother’s bannermen, and when beyond their lands and up the valley, to the others of Dorne. Soon enough they had gone into the Prince’s Pass.

Eddard was not fond of this part of their itinerary. In every little tower, keep, and holdfast, every lord and lady made the same request: mercy for their living kin, and bones of the dead ones. Lord Howland would only collect the names, and pass his sympathies. Every request seemed to wear his mask away into a look of depressed acceptance.

 At every place when able to, she enjoyed their travels. They picked flowers at their stops, and with the lords and ladies Camille played with their children, ate rich food, and was given gifts. She rarely saw her father, who was stiff and uncomfortable, always in a hurry to leave. It is not quite the same in Skyreach.

She is speechless as she sees it. Every Castle is as impressive as the last, and Yadira and Essie enjoy seeing her gasp every time. Where Starfall was carved from a meteor, and Blackmont nestled on an Isle at the joining of two Rivers, Skyreach is carved and built into sandstone. You could only approach it from the narrow passage, the entire castle surrounded by towering rocks.

It is Lady Jennelyn, Lord Franklin Fowler’s wife, who greets them. Her hair is long and in elaborate braids, her clothes black, down to her jewels. She is so tall and blonde she has to ask Ernatta if she is even Dornish, which makes her laugh.

“Of course she is,” she laughs, “It is not your looks that marks you from Dorne.”

Lady Fowler offers them the finest rooms they have, with the best food available, and hosts them all in her hall. While their men eat below, Camille and Eddard who sit with her and her children at the high dais. The feelings here are no different from the valley– desperation, hatred, pain, all wrapped in courtesies.

Lady Jennelyn makes no hesitation to speak with her father alone. Lady Jennelyn is braver than most, Yadira murmurs to her uncle Arthur, as she wanted to know of their Princess and her children. Her father is not the type of man to lie, she realizes when she sees the tears in the proud woman’s eyes. She does not know what he actually says, as it is a common reaction, and Camille decides she will devote more time to learn more words in the common tongue.

That Lady Jennelyn is sweet to her at meals, even private dinners with her father and Lord Reed. She and her daughters curtsey to her, and call her ‘Lady Lyarra’ as they call him ‘Lord Stark’. It seems they all mean it too, though Yadira is everywhere with her father and her, who watches everyone like a hawk.

“We are Dornish,” she whispers to Essie one evening, “It is not our way to give in so easily.” She can see them through a small bird and wonders what they mean.

Lady Jennelyn joins them unexpectedly while she stretches, in the gardens, with light that is angled between stones, with only Ernatta attendant, and one of her ladies. Ernatta immediately bows, while she does not. She hates the curtsey and bowing, but it isn’t her world, and if she can avoid it, she will. Ernatta isn't afforded such options.

“Hello, sweetling,” The woman coos, the way all people do to babies.

“My Lady Jennelyn,” she says, remembering her courtesies. Lady Fowler smiles brighter.

“You have the look of your grandmother, did you know that?”

“Yes.” Camille cannot help but smile at her– she is so nice. Used to being held by her during this trip, she reaches out her arms, and Jennelyn has her high in the air where she can see everything– the gardens are wide with pools of water, and she can even briefly see the river a ways away.

“Send for him,” Jennelyn says in a tone that gave no room for argument. Ernatta disapproves but feels and stalls– her lady has run off leaving them alone. She immediately knows now that this would go badly.  She thinks her father will arrive, but a short moment passes before Arthur comes to them in the shade. Ser Arthur disapproves of her in Jennelyn’s arms.  Camille is shocked to see him– her uncle comes to see her only at meals or when she is asleep to Yadira tells him about her day. He was handsome as all of her family was and _tall_.

Arthur’s face is hard, his look is threatening. His violet-blue eyes are unblinking, and his mouth is in a scowl but Lady Jennelyn seems undisturbed.

“My Lady.” Arthur nods his head as he does at every person, his eyes never leaving her face. Lady Fowler only nods back in response. Ernatta wisely is quiet. Her uncle's voice is deep, but stern.

“My niece is one for adventure, Lady Fowler. For that, it was not intentional for her to disturb you. I will have her handmaid take her to her chambers–”

“There is no need, Ser Arthur.” Jennelyn holds her tighter. She wants to get down now, but afraid of being dropped. She gives her uncle a smile, holding out her arms. Lady Jennelyn steps away as he reaches for her.

“Tell me, Ser Arthur, what will become of you when you arrive at the capital?” Arthur seems to harden, his armor a blinding white at this angle in the sun.

“It is the decision of the king.” Lady Jennelyn smiles and kisses her head, smoothing her curls.

“The new king?” Her tone is sharp. “What of your prince?”

Jennelyn ignores her uncles movement for her.

“Surely you have not forgotten our Prince? Doran. Will you go to him when this is done?”

Camille feels uncomfortable then, uncomfortable in the woman’s arms.

“Have you nothing to say?”

“I am of the Kingsguard, and my duty–”

“Your duty laid with our princess. Elia was to be our queen. That is where your duty should be placed along with your loyalty!”

Desperate to get out of the situation, she lets out a shriek, the little animals around do so as well. Jennelyn is shocked, but Yadira is there, pulling her from Jennelyn’s arms. Ernatta’s handmaid is close behind, her red and out of breath.  Yadira smooths the tension as she always does, giving excuses and they leave quickly. Lady Fowler is full of anger, not restrained by the necessity of playing nice with her father. Her voice echoes.

“May the mother give you mercy, Ser Arthur,” she hisses, “I pray the Prince shall not.”

Yadira goes against telling her father, focusing on Baby Jon, while her uncle goes behind his mask once again and gives her no attention for the rest of their stay at Skyreach. Camille wants her mother and finds no joy in searching the chambers, passages, and gorges of the castle. 

A drizzling rain joins them as they pass into the Marches.  Essie pointed out the border between Dorne and the Stormlands, separated only by a broken down wall once used when Dorne was its own Kingdom. Here, instead of pain, the nobles and people alike cheered her father and the king. There were no requests for mercy, or negotiations, or thin-veiled hate. Only feasts and joy.

Her father finds it easier here. With Lord Howland at his side, does what he can to food, goods or coin where he can. He has also accepted people into his retinue and train, which was smaller than needed for a ‘man of his rank’.

This is has caused Yadira to virtually isolate her and baby Jon in their nursery whenever they have a room. For the baby, she knows it is no different, but she went from picking flowers to staring at stones walls. Though she has now managed to soar in the sky and look down at miles of lovely wilderness, and cattle and the people, the sight does not hold her attention too long. Theryrse and Aurelia play with her, but she is rebellious as ever to get out of the box deemed a suite room. Ernatta has complained to Camille enough that it draws her uncle’s attention, who has a room across from hers.

Arthur barters with Camille and escorts Ernatta and her out to a small sunny space in a tiny holdfast so she isn’t so restless. He even reads to her as well after supper, where she falls asleep before he finishes anything. Arthur promises he will let her read next time and Camille is pleased. His eyes crinkle in the corner for once when she tells him so.

After a day of travel, Arthur sits in the grass in the sun in only his white breeches and tunic, his feet out of his boots and bright in the sunlight. He is alone, on the edge of the camp, and no one seeks to disturb him. Even Ernatta, her handmaid, urges Camille to turn around, for Ser Arthur is ‘busy’. Her uncle had promised to let her read a book, and so she is determined to read it and show him how far she has gotten in her lessons. Ernatta, who refuses to lose her again, relents. Camille wastes no time when she comes to him, giving him a bob of a curtsey.

“You promised I could read you a book, Uncle Arthur.” She tries not to make it an accusation, but her squeaky voice can hardly hide it. She wasn’t that practiced yet in this body.

“I did.” She notices her uncle's voice is not like other Dornishmen– while his voice is deep, his words do not roll as much as others. Camille is happy when he pulls her to his lap and smiles off Ernatta.  She smooths out her dress and turns the page as her uncle holds the book. The cover is leather with little studs, and each spread has an illumination on the left, and on the right large words, about six lines each.

“This is about Florian and Jonquil,” she says immediately. Her uncle cocks his head to the side, brows furrowed as he looks at her.

“Indeed Arra. And how did you know?”

“It says here on the page.” It was funny to her to see him be so confused. He turned the page, and she starts to read aloud, as no one reads silently here. Honestly, her mother’s maester gave her harder books. Halfway through her uncle stops her, closing the book. He stares at her in wonder, and she fights back a laugh. He was very confused now.

“I did not know you read so, Arra.”

“I read to momma all the time.” she beams. It was always good to play dumb. Her uncle sits for a moment, studying her.

“And how often is that?”

“Nightly.”

Her uncle looks truly shocked now, appraising her, his purple sapphire eyes to her lilac. Some type of understanding comes as his brows rise and then lower.

“And what else did you do with your mother?”

“I practice my High Valyrian,” she says, laying back, “Or Rhoynish,” the words rolled as she spoke them. “And Common too,” she says, mimicking what she had once heard her mother say in the stilting tongue. “But I need more practice.”

Her uncle’s brows raise again before he places the book back in front of her.

Later that day when she has awoken from her nap, that Ypolita announces her uncle, who comes with more books, deposited by her page, who is Essine’s son, Felix. He adores Arthur, and bows after her uncle gives him a solemn knightly nod. He attempts to do the same, and leaves. Camille is delighted by the books, and there are several: The first is the tale of a knight against a dragon, and she reads it, delicately turning the page and stopping to ask about the illustrations. Her uncle gives her a blank look all the while. Arthur gives her another book, a tale about a traveler who went from Oldtown to Winterfell by foot, in Dornish. Next was a Rhoynish tale of water wizards of old. The next book was the story of King Aegon, and his queens Visyena and Rhaenys. Then, the story of Harrenhall in common which was more like a tomb and difficult. It was so dusty she coughs. It was also so horrific and Camille wondered why her uncle even gave it to her.

“Uncle, may I dress for supper?” She is tired of reading now and hungry, and his stare makes her uncomfortable. Ashara was thrilled at her skill in books, but now she thinks that maybe she shouldn’t have let him know just how far she had gotten.

“Yes, we have sat too long.” Her uncle stands, telling Ypolita to leave the books as they are and to find Ernatta and Yadira. Ypolita, used to this reaction does as she is told, and then ushers Camille behind her Ebony wood screen to dress before her father and the servers arrive. Yadira, Ernatta, and Essine are not surprised, and when she comes out in a new dress for the feast at the holdfast, her uncle is gone and a knowing look is being exchanged between the women.

As she watches through Yadira’s pet dog, Arthur does not believe Essine at first about her reading or speaking. She is used to her talking in whichever language she had remembered to speak, and Yadira's shock at her ‘devouring of books’ had worn off quickly at their arrival at Starfall. Camille overhears Yadira tell her uncle in her chambers that the entire court of Starfall knew she was hallowborn. Ashara was convinced it was the gods, the Old Gods, that made her this way and was sensitive about any word against her. She encouraged her learning, in fact.  Her uncle is unnerved by the idea. She wonders what he would believe if she told him she was from another world.  Camille did worry about one thing– what was a hallowborn? She had never heard of that.

The questions stuck with her as they were welcomed into Blackhaven, a castle great and monstrous, intimidating and beautiful. Her uncle, on his horse next to her carriage, whispers of Daynes and other Dornishmen who set fire to it a hundred times. Camille knows he should not say it, but she will admit it made her laugh and gasp at the story. Their banners snap in the air and as they enter the castle, Yadira says the Dornish do not like the marchers, and she can tell by the looks of the people in the yard the feeling is mutual. They are greeted by young Lord Beric Dondarrion, who is only a child, and his aunt and regent, Alysanne, a Dondarrion by birth. Both have red-gold hair similar to what they saw on throughout the Marshes and the Prince’s Pass, and she wonders what the real difference is between the people here besides food, language, and an old wall.

Lyarra stays with Ned in his multiple chambers.  They are feasted with her father celebrated, and her aunt mourned. Camille always goes off to bed soon after supper– she is so tired in this body and takes a bath, where she is put into her father’s bed. When he arrives after supper, tall and lean, everyone near drops to the floor while she looked at him under furs. She was surprised her father was in the mood to give her a little smile. Her father dismissed everyone in the room, and with one last look from Ernatta who stayed with her, they were gone.

“Arra,” Eddard’s northern brogue was a question and command at once.  She could tell it was more summoning by how he sat straight in his chair, and so she moved her furs and put her feet in her silk slippers and scuttled over. Her mother would shriek if she did such a thing with her. Camille eyes the books on the table next to him uncertainly, sure that Arthur had told where everyone else left her talent unsaid.

“Pappa.” Eddard had become used to keeping her with him, where she would sleep cuddled close to him on the softest bed and under the warmest furs.

“I have been told a curious thing from Ser Arthur.” His eyes follow her, in a knowing way.

“The garden?” Her father shook his head.

“He says you take to your letters quite well.”

“Yes, the maester taught me.” She did not know what else to say. She didn’t know Eddard, even if he was nice, even if he was her father.  She resented being so far from her mother and was not open to telling him anything. He made Ashara cry, even without Baby Jon being mentioned.

“Come here.” The Old tongue sounded almost Scottish to her but was heavy and sliding and certainly not English. She knows what that means, however, Lord Reed had taught her a bit, and she comes a bit closer to Eddard until he is able to reach down and pull Camille to his lap.

“These are books I liked as a boy.” He points to each book as he tells her of them: the tale of a young warrior and his lady love, the tale of a rivermaid who was stolen by wolves, and of the goddess of the Wolfswood. They didn’t even make it through half of the first book, because Camille asked him about almost every word. Shyly she looked at her father who gives a knowing look.

“Who taught you your letters?”

“Essine, and the maester.” Her father searches her face one more time.

“There are maesters in the north for you Arra. And the Kindred as well. Do you know what they are?”

She shakes her head and feigns tiredness laying back, and rubbing her eyes and blinking hard. He decides to end their conversation then, and hoists her to the bed and pulls the furs up Relieved, Camille falls asleep quickly. She would have to be careful here.


	5. Chapter Four

Where the Marches were warm with drizzle, the northern part of the Stormlands is sticky and wet. Camille feels as if she is back in Florida, constantly sweating from the humidity. While traveling Camille doesn't know what is worse: the lack of proper baths somedays, or the constant rain. In Starfall, they washed daily, rubbed with oil and creams for softness and scent. Here, even the nobles bathe only a few days, insisting a wet rag is efficient. It is disgusting, and Yadira, Essie, and all of her Dornish household agree, but they hold their tongue for her father, who is loved in this place.

Eddard makes sure they travel as close to 'five-and-twenty' miles a day, to their misery. The handmaids and the chamberers tie the wheelhouse windows tightly, as they sat under heavy shawls missing home. On the drizzling days, she would find people toiling in the fields, with babies on their backs, or when they passed through little villages, the women and their children would all come out. They were all tired and dirty, living in little huts with straw roofs unless they had a bit of money for a better home. At the sight of her staring and frowns toward the 'small folk', Yadira and Ernatta would keep her far from the windows and occupied with games with Theryse and Aurelia. Whenever they stopped, she made sure she offered something to whomever she saw, which didn't impress her ladies much.

On the road to Storm's End, they had passed Summerhall as well. It loomed a short ways away on the road. Its columns, large windows, and arches all were ruins, darkened by grey skies and rain. Flowers grew everywhere, giving a burst of color to the solemn place, but it gave Camille such an ominous feeling. When the traveling party had passed it, Camille had a violent tremor go through her which gave Ernatta quite a shock. It had scared her as well, and she spent a great deal of time wrapped in Yadira's arms, half drugged from whatever was in the 'tonics and tinctures' she was given to soothe her. It had put her guard up, and in the night she barely slept, making Camille irritable with everyone. She was not able to sleep the entire night for at least a week where Yadira wisely kept her from her father who was unamused with her tantrums. Not that she cared much. She was a toddler, and could as she wished.

At Durran's Point, finally upon Storm's End, they heavy rain beat on the roof of their wheelhouse and soaked everything. They are nearly stranded on the road that has turned to mud and sludge until men come in livery of yellow and black to escort 'Lord Stark and his party' to the castle. The men here are used to this weather and work immediately to get them moving as thunder cracks. When Yadira demands they close the windows and stay inside as they stop and wait. The men had no patience for that, and with great cloaks covered them, she in Yadira's arms, and put on horses with men. She didn't have to deal with this back home– Starfall or Chicago –where there are umbrellas and paved roads. They then thunder down the road. It took everything in her not to scream, but she did cry herself to sleep: a better way to endure the ride.

Eventually, she finds herself at Yadira's feet, and terribly wet. She is in Zirimiri, Yadira's dog, she realizes instantly. Her tall boots are covered in mud, her gown as well, as she debates with a man, who seems put out to be in the situation

"Ser Henry, surely you understand these rooms are unsatisfactory?" Yadira's Common Tongue is heavily accented, but her brows are pinched. Ser Henry is taller than Yadira, who is of average height for a woman, but nothing else is special about him: straight brown hair, brown eyes, and a beard. He was sort of attractive if you looked at him long enough. Yadira probably didn't feel that way though.

"I have been given orders–" "By who?"

Yadira stands close to Ser Henry, unblinking, sopping wet, and angry. She doesn't have her fists together, but she is stiff. Henry is irritated and maybe a bit intimidated, the way he keeps looking away.

"By the steward himself. These rooms are for Lord Stark's bastards–" he stutters as Yadira's feet reposition themselves, and she wishes she had a higher view to see what face she makes now as she turns her head. Yadira is relentless.

"Do you have children of your own?"

"Yes, I have three–"

"Then you know that fresh air is good for the health of babes. That light is good for children."

"Lady Yadira, these are the rooms assigned to you–" "These rooms are kin to dungeons, not sleeping chambers!"

Yadira's face is cool, but her face is pinched, and Ser Henry is unimpressed. He is simply an usher, the poor man. He doesn't make those decisions. Yadira blocks the way into the rooms and makes a crowd of the servants and ladies as Baby Jon starts to cry in his wet nurse's arms. Lord Howland arrives then- she recognized the wraps around his boots, and when she looks up, he has a soft smile on his face, amused at Yadira no doubt. Looking to Henry she can tell he dwarfs sweet Howland- but he was a short man so that wasn't hard to do. His usual smile is gone, and devoid of much emotion, and his tone is flat. Howland had not hidden how he had little love for 'Southrons' once they went into the Marches. They were fond of mocking him. Howland wasted no time speaking with him: yes he knows what the steward had organized, but the chambers will be rearranged. Lord Starks demands it.

The poor usher has no choice but relent, opening the parchment handed to him, and gestures to several grooms to go back into the windowless-chambers and to gather their things. She notices Ernatta holds Camille herself in her arms. She had wondered where her body went. Yadira finds humor in the situation as she gives a silent hard faced look as the men pack up their things and move.

"Through this noise, the babe fusses, but Arra barely moves." Essine, who had come from the other end of the hall, had her brows lifted.

"I suspected it was Arra making complaint myself." Camille felt insulted. She wasn't that bad. Ernatta chuckled, "When she sleeps she is like the dead, my lady. Let us count it as a blessing, she has fussed a great deal on this trip."

Camille awakes in her nursery, a bright sky greeting her and the smell of smoke tickling her nostrils. Theryse and Aurelia sleep sprawled behind her, the velvet hangings around her bed are drawn all around to block the light, except for one small opening. Ypolita who sits and sews in there, giving her a look to see if she would move and wake. When she doesn't move again, Ypolita looks back down at her work– a brightly colored yellow gown of hers– thinking she might sleep again. Without thought, she slips into Zirimiri.

Her bedchamber has grey stone walls, three windows, with a large spacious bed, and rugs on the floor, though they were not Myrish. All around were tapestries of vivid colors, gold, and silver. The furniture was magnificent- it was all expertly carved with stags and antlers everywhere. Camille was grateful to be away from the compact space of the wheelhouse. Ernatta, Essine, and Yadira sat on the settees huddled together, as her usher, Ladron, was nodded off to keep the door. There was tea and treats untouched on the table: a special jam from Starfall, peach cakes, nuts, and bread and a large flagon of wine. Their ladies were all elsewhere and Camille had found that they were insulted by the Steward of the castle, Ser Courtnay Penrose, giving them inadequate rooms and arguing with Essine about the rest of her small household. For Essie, the final insult was that he apologized only to Eddard, and paid little mind to 'the Dornish women' at all.

"He has much nerve to admit so," Ernatta had shirts she was sewing in her lap,

"And in front of you!"

"I am but a Dornish woman in Northron's world. What importance does a chatelaine have?" Decidedly little, Camille realized, and Essine felt the same.

"And Lord Stark, he said nothing?"

"Well he owes no loyalty to us," Ernata stated, putting her shirts and items to the side. "We are far from Dorne now. What use is it to show too much kindness to us in this kingdom?"

Yadira and Essie exchange looks, and Yadira turns away and looks into the fire. "He had not shown much more kindness in Dorne." Essine scoffed, rolling her eyes. Yadira gave a pause again, and then picked up a cake.

"How is the household? They are boarded? Are any put in the town?"

"No, that would be mad. For now, everyone shares a few rooms, even on cots. I would rather them not be alone. There have been complaints about the food though."

"I think the Stormlanders are still hungry." Ernatta quips, sipping some wine.

They all chuckle at that, picking at their food, but hushing as one of their ladies, a younger handmaid, enters to announce their guest.

"Lord Baratheon is here, my lady."

"Why ever would he come?" Ernatta looks between Yadira and Essine confused.

"Tell him to wait Odall." Yadira rolls her eyes and rises to smooth out her clothes, a vivid rose damask with a sunflower overrobe. Her customary gold jewelry is there as well, at her head, ears, neck, bosom, and wrists. Yadira gives a serious look to both women and they sober up adjusting themselves.

Essine wastes no time. "Ernatta, dress Lyarra now."

Ypolita was already ahead of her orders, gently shaking her and her ladies awake in bed. She has cloth-of-silver bed robes on Theryse and Aurelia in seconds, insisting they not yawn. Ernatta has smoothed both of their heads as they move to the side, and slips her cream silk slippers full of seed pearls on and tightly wraps a gold-on-cream silk brocade robe on her, a small band of pearls to contain her hair off to the side.

"My lady, Lord Baratheon comes now to see you," Ernatta says.

"Be sure to curtsey, and be sure to make no faces," Essine quickly follows, "Though he comes unannounced."

Yadira has gone to speak with the Lord Paramount first. The words Essine makes her practice are familiar in her mouth, as she is reminded to great him in common. Essine doubts he can speak anything else. Camille is escorted into her solar and there Theryse and Aurelia stand three steps behind her, Ernatta to the side, and Essie on the other a bit of a distance away. Then some of her guards come, and then guards of yellow and black, and then Yadira, whose three ladies follow behind her in violet gowns and heavy gold jewelry similar to their mistress. Yadira gives a smile to her then, announcing that Lord Baratheon is eager to meet her, and she says she is delighted to meet him, too, as is customary.

Camille was curious about the Lord Paramount. Why would such a great lord want to meet her anyway? She was a baby.

Soon the room was filled with men in cambric, samite, velvets, brocades, and damask, covered in jewels with large hats. Grooms also filled the room, and after all of them came a boy in a dark navy velvet doublet, two large gold chains, and breeches to match. He had black hair, and blue eyes, and looked to be as old as a page. There was a look of expectation on his face, and when he finally looked over to her, his face broke into a large smile. He waited no time in introductions.

"So they are right– you do look like a doll!"

Camille fought the urge to look at Essine or Yadira. They had been strict in reminding her to look about everywhere as if she was common because a lady held eye contact when she spoke. Camille instead looked for them out the corners of her eyes. They stood still as stone with no gesture of assistance, while all of Lord Baratheon's men made noise and gave made postures. Why did they act so in front of their Lord? Her grandmother had ill-mannered courtiers moved out of her court, and sent to a septon or septa for etiquette if they did anything close to what these men were doing.

"Lord Baratheon." She did as she practiced curtseying the best she could. She then stood back up straight, and gave a little smile, but didn't move. He ranks higher, she remembered from her lessons. He must greet me first.

"I'm Renly!" The boy gave larger smile and walked over to her. Camille then gave him the smile that made her baby dimples show and saw how his eyes lit up. People really do love babies.

"Well met, Renly." He moved to pinch her cheek and Ernatta shifted slightly. She knew she hated it when people she didn't know touched her. She would have to forget that now. Renly looked at her expectantly. Lord Baratheon was really just a kid and so she found it was easy. He told her she was pretty as a doll-like everyone had told him, and then gave her a doll as a gift. It was a woman in the latest Stormlands fashions, expertly carved and painted. However Aurelia and Theryse burst into joy at the sight of it, and Renly's grooms given them their own dolls too, similar to hers, as gifts. He gave everyone in her household a gift, actually. Small wooden coffers and bags of trinkets or gold pieces. That had brought a smile to Yadira's face, a real one. Renly had insisted she go everywhere with him, and after Yadira insisted that she would dress and eat, they could play making a quiet arrangement with his Lady Mistress, an elderly Baratheon woman by marriage, named Drucylla.

In the mornings she has her lessons in her languages and visits Baby Jon. She also has to practice her courtesies. It is the worst part of her day. Yadira was strict, quick to reprimand. She insists she is 'Lord Stark's daughter, and Ashara Dayne's as well' and must 'act like the lady she is'. Camille is reminded again and again: she must not cough or sneeze into her hand, she should not scream, she should not yawn, ladies stand up straight, ladies do not curse (which she had heard Essine do plenty of times), ladies are courteous, they always give thanks, Ladies pay attention to what is said, ladies do not touch random things, ladies mind what they say, don't look about, wait until your elders address you, and ladies must sit still. That was the worst. Maybe in her old life, she could do it, but at only two and some months, Camille felt like she would die if she had to be still longer than five minutes. Along with the test of her patience, she had to practice walking (she must glide), the act of sitting down on chairs, stools, and benches, with or without people; how to give thanks; her curtsey, which she would do multiple times in a row until Yadira was satisfied; how to grab cups, a goblet, a fork, a knife, a spoon, how to eat soup, and pull bread. She even had to practice how to use the chamber pot. Camille felt she would go insane.

Thankfully, after dinner, Camille was allowed out and about with her guard for one or two hours, playing in the yard and gardens, or chasing Renly and the boys that were his companions along with Aurelia and Theryse until it was time for her nap. She relishes in the freedom. But soon after her hour nap, Yadira puts her in another round of vigorous training- she has to learn dances, and songs to sing, and how to thread a large over-sized needle, and her numbers. Everyone in her household is relieved at Yadira's fierce and grueling torture: this is the first place she has been too tired to escape on her own. She spends her naptimes actually sleeping if she can help it, though she does explore at night.

Storm's End punches the sky in one great drum tower, large enough to hold several parts of the castle within it. Camille saw through seagulls that the seaward side of the castle went straight to the sea that constantly crashed against it. Inside the walls were the barracks and armory, and hundreds of servants. She did not think Starfall or any other castle had so many, all lingering just out of sight. It was nerve-racking, knowing someone was always watching. The walls are all uncommonly smooth compared to what she knew of castles in her own world. Touching them lead brought little sparks in her fingers and toes and on the back of her neck. Yadira catches her one time with a curious smile, in between her nap and supper, and touches the wall with her.

"This is a strange castle, isn't it Arra?" She agrees with Yadira giving only a little smile to her knowing look. The most fascinating part was the damp passage at the bottom of the castle. It was blocked off, men patrolling. It was frightening looking.

The most important thing, to Eddard, is that there is a proper Godswood. Both her father and Lord Howland go to the Godswood every night for prayer, for hours, where the other few northmen who had met them at the castle do so throughout the day. Eddard decides it is good for her to learn her prayers as well, and after her supper takes her to the holy place where his gods live. Yadira and the others too afraid to accompany them at this time of day, and with strange, solemn looks, watches them depart from her solar.

The Godswood is dark and overgrown but the sight of the weirwood startles her– she had never seen a tree that wept blood. Her father insisted it was a sap, but Camille had never seen red sap before. It had a solemn face like the one her father wore. It is here Camille is taught to pray with her father, where he tells her of the Old Gods. It is here that he teaches her to pray for her grandfather, and uncle, and her aunt, all gone from this life now, for her baby brothers who are new to the world and her uncle Benjen, who is too young to be alone. His voice shakes and cracks as he does, and she keeps quiet, making sure to at least pretend she is doing so.

Eddard might cry if she doesn't.

This schedule lasts for a month. Breaking fast in her father's solar, languages, visiting her brother, courtesies, dinner, playtime, naptime, sing, dance, thread needles, supper, prayer, and sleeping. Lord Howland interrupts her etiquette lessons one morning and she is beyond grateful, though she stays standing still. Eddard has received word from the king, and they are to leave within days for the trip.

But her father is very irritable with the wheelhouse and is busy working with the steward and Essie. There is the suggestion she rides with Ernatta on horseback, but Yadira instantly shoots that idea down. Horses are too large for her. She is a baby. Lord Howland agrees, and surprisingly so does her father, but must act with the steward that his words have some weight. He leaves, exchanging a smile with her. No matter how they traveled, they would be gone soon.

Yadira and Essie have enough gossip away, later in the day, Ernatta now in charge of her lessons with the needle. At all meals, her household was like perfect, well-dressed statues, compared to what the Stormlanders wore in their bulky clothes. Even worse their manners at the table were nowhere near as polished as her household, which made her stare a bit. It was no shock that the Stormlanders don't trust her household- there had already been someone 'put to the stocks' for attacking one of her guards. There was an air of distrust of the castle in general toward them whenever she did anything and they followed, and her Uncle Arthur had no help either, who was equally revered and looked down on and hidden away from her except for rare occasions. Any question she had about him was vaguely answered and the topic switched to something else. It frustrated her how many times had she done this with kids, but not that she was one she wanted to shriek. Camille wasn't stupid. She knew something was going on. When she would look through birds, she would only find him praying, eating, and kneeling on the side of his bed in his room.

It is the day of the departure feast. Her father had given in to another wheelhouse, but it would be of Stormlander design, promised to ride better on the Kingsroad. Essine scoffed at that during their discussion while she and her friends napped. An Early nap, as she seemed tired. And she was tired. Of her lessons. She is woken for dinner, and then she is outside to play with Renly and his friends, the adults all watching. They are hidden in trees, hidden from sight, however. It is there that one of the boys, Aslac Caron, asks about her eyes.

"They are my grandmother's eyes," she says proudly. Renly likes to stare at them, as others do. They are a rare color indeed. The boy then asks if Lady Catelyn has the same eyes.

"The Lady Catelyn?" She is confused.

"My mother is the Lady Ashara Dayne." Camille isn't sure who Catelyn is or why he would think she is her mother. Everyone knows Ashara is her mother. Everyone says she looks like a Dayne, too. No one in her family had that name either.

"But Lord Stark is married to Lady Catelyn." Her father is married? She pulls a face. No one has ever mentioned her before. Before she can ask questions, grooms and ladies pour into their space, forcing them to separate. When she asks who Catelyn is, her ladies all have the look on their face. Like with her uncle, they change the topic.

"Let her ask her father," Ernatta insists between them when they think she is asleep and she is in in the dog. Yadira and Essie had agreed.

She was not going to ask her father who Catelyn was. This felt similar to asking her mother what a bastard was and if they were hesitant enough to not answer, she did not want her ladies in trouble with her father later. While her Ashara could get angry, her father had a sharp rage. She was comfortable playing an ignorant two-year-old. She was sure she would meet the woman.

At the feast, Camille takes two bites of everything that passes her- lamb, beef, pork, boar, carrots, turnips, lobster, all sorts of vegetables all in butter and sauces that are delicious. She even has a light ale, and it is near the end of the meal, she has given up on talking to her father and Lord Howland who she was next too. They are amused as she tries to keep her manners, but she is sleepy now. A look from her father has someone gathering her up from the dais and hustled off.

In her sleep, she searches for Yadira and finds her in her uncle's room after pawing the door. Zirimiri. There her uncle sits in a chair and Yadira across from him. The flames throw light on the skin as they sit in silence and she settles at his feet.

"Are you sure to let the dog stay?"

"Let them tell Lord Stark. I will hide nothing." Yadira is very bold about her father. Silence overcomes them until her uncle opens his mouth. She had not noticed before, but he had a sweet face- handsome, but open now with Yadira, who is relaxed, her normal formal posture lax and slouched.

"In the capital, I will be seized until trial."

"You are sure of it?"

"Lord Stark has been gracious enough to tell me what the King plans to do."

"Or foolish," she insists. "Mayhaps he wishes for you to escape across the sea."

"He knows I will not leave." They look at each other for some time.

"Has he told you what he plans to do after you're in the dungeons?" Yadira's voice is incredulous, shaking her head.

"No."

"Then the king must not know either. You are of the Kingsguard." Arthur seemed unconvinced. Silence comes again, heavier as Yadira takes another goblet of wine, a deep red, judging by her lips. She gives a resigned smile

Arthur just looks into the fire. "This is not the life I imagined, Yadi."

"It will be hard cousin, but should we play this right, we shall weather the storm."

"You have nothing to be punished for." Arthur is shocked, and turning his head sharply. Yadira gives a shrug. She tries to be calm, but Camille sees her free hand tremble.

"Lord Stark has told me things as well. The new king wants to speak to me– mayhaps alone, and without Lord Eddard. Who knows what he will judge. He spared the man who vowed to protect the king but killed him like a dirty peasant, mad or not."

"What will we do?" A resigned look came to his face then, hands clasped as he leans on his knees, as if willing himself in the fire.

Yadira seemed astonished.

"What we will do Arthur, is tell the truth."

 


	6. Chapter Five

Their travels from the Stormlands was been long. Not only was it the new and better wheelhouse that delayed them, but the constant greeting and feasting of every lord who joined them on the journey to the capital. Their party, which had been ‘appropriate’ according to her father was now hundreds of people. Worse, her father had to entertain them. 

 After leaving Storm’s End, house Buckler hosted them, then house Errol, and then house Fell—and along their travels between their great castles, smaller lords joined them, all eager for the royal wedding. The name itself was enough to make Eddard moody. Then they approached the Kingswood, with its oaks and maples, and hickories, and all the little animals scurrying far away from their large group. The Wardens of the Kingswood and their sheriffs arrived to escort Eddard’s party to the other side with celebration and gifts and flattery. It wasn’t long before members of House Massey, Bar Emmon, Wendwater, and Chelsted also attached themselves to Eddard, who wanted to travel with ‘the King’s brother’ Lord Stark, and his actual brother, Renly, who wanted everyone to call him Lord Baratheon. Essine had insisted that his investment was a way off though, but she would not correct him. Her father’s mood grew worse and worse as they all came and insisted on meals with him and private meetings. Yadira felt his plight a great deal more, keeping their prying eyes and nosy servants from Camille and her baby brother. 

“There was another who claimed they were on their way to Lord Stark,” Essine announces coming into Camille’s white cloth of gold pavilion in the morning. She, Theryse, and Aurelia lay in their bedrobes as Ernatta reads them stories and Baby Jon coos in his nurse’s arms. Camille was not interested in talking or being courteous and was thankful she was a baby for once. She slips into Zirimiri to find out what else has happened as she was confined again, and released from Yadira’s torture. 

“I had a woman imply that her children play with the girls,” Yadira said in Common with a thick Dornish drawl as if she hoped someone heard.

 “This is the way of things so close to the capital Yadi.” Uncle Arthur relaxed on a settee, his voice has flowing again in the Dornish way, in the safety of her tent. Eddard does not keep him locked away Camille realizes—he prefers solitude. It is rare to have him in her rooms. 

“Oh?” Essine quips.

“Yes,” he says, a gentle smile. “All want to meet the children.”  

“You mean what they look like,” Yadira says as she embroiders. 

“Or who their mothers are?” Essine says shrugging, waving away a handmaid of hers.

Arthur gives them both a scowl, being mocked. Essie cannot hide her laughter. 

“Oh cousin, we know, but they are so obvious.” 

“No one can hide curiosity, Essie.”

“But the guards should be able to hide us.” Essine quips back.

“Or at least deter them,” Yadira murmurs sharing a glance with Arthur. 

Camille knew they must be speaking about the messengers from the capital. She, along with Yadira, Eddard, and Lord Reed was all having supper when the men had come. The normal peace outside the tent had grown into some commotion, and soon a man and a few others behind him had come through. Eddard had kept a straight face, but the twitch had given away his anger. 

“Lord Stark.” The man was so pale and blonde he nearly didn’t exist. 

“This is not the place to speak. I gave word I would give audience to you later in the day.”

The man looks over to her, and the wet nurse with Baby Jon, and the others at his table. Across from her, she saw a guard scowl.

“Forgive me, my lord, it is the word of the king I deliver.”

 Her father wastes no time calling for a groom to take the message and sent him away with Stark men behind him, a scowl on his face the entire time. 

“Lannisters,” he hissed. 

The entire thing had alarmed Yadira and reported it all to her ladies as soon as she was back to her rooms. Camille had learned then she would have to watch the Lannisters.

A large group of thundering men greets them close to the city. Three hundred men for Lord Stark’s honor guard, according to Ernatta’s husband who rides beside them. It is a tremendous sight. Camille is not with her father at the front, but through the horses, she sees he seems happier around the Northmen in the guard. 

Their trip to the city was the shortest part of the trip, and still uncomfortable. Camille wished she had a car again. She took a smooth ride for granted. She would even take a few potholes, compared to what options she had now. The thought of the L in Chicago made her cry. She missed trains. She missed driving. She missed her world.

Soon enough though she finds the sight beyond her windows fascinating as all the people waiting for them seemed to grow larger as they rode.

Yadira, exasperated, put the shade down as they got closer and closer to the city.

“It smells,” Yadira said loudly in Dornish. Camille holds back a giggle.

When they arrived outside the King’s Gate, wide with smooth stones, she realized it was a bigger group than she had realized, and all the nobles were behind the king.

The King, Robert, was handsome too. Camille couldn’t help but smile as she saw his face through the window. Her father threw one leg over his horse and pushed himself off and kneeled before him like something out of the movie. They helped Renly down off his horse and he did the same. The rest of the large party then mimicked them, she next to Renly’s Lady Mistress. She was so angry to dirty this dress it was a shiny orange embroidered with lemons. 

The King’s voice rang out: He was glad to have Eddard, Lord Stark, and his brother Renly, back with him, now that this war was over. Robert commanded him to stand, and they did, Robert patting Renly’s head, and then he and Eddard hugged each other like childish little boys. An elderly man next to them looked like he wanted to roll his eyes.

That is the new Hand of the King, Jon Arryn, Yadira whispered. She could not hear much else, but she was sure Essie murmured something about him being old.

She paid little attention as Ernatta was quick to give pieces of apple to eat with Theryse and Aurelia. They soon were all ordered to rise and back into their horses or carriages, to make the way down the road to the Red Keep, large and pink in the distance. It takes no time to pass through bronze gates to a large yard. Camille’s ladies flow out of the wheelhouse, and she goes in Yadira’s arms. She is already dozing, and a bit hungry. Yadira keeps her head on her shoulder when she hears murmurs.

It is her uncle, Camille realizes. What did the king order? In Zimiziri again, she sees several men come to Arthur, surrounding him. Meanwhile, he is calm, swinging his foot over his horses head and getting down as if they are greeting him like a friend. Eddard announces in a bold voice that Ser Arthur comes willingly and with no ill intentions. The King and all his people watch with a soft pattern of whispers, ignoring his words.

When Arthur reaches for his sword, the men hesitate, and murmurs of the nobles grow louder as people watch. Camille struggles to stay in the dog with the smell of fear everywhere and made her blood race, and. she is soon back in Yadira’s tight grip and can feel her heart pounding. He had surrendered his weapons, she sees from a little bird. It is over quicker than expected. Camille watches the faces of her household as her uncle, their cousin, is escorted away. Felix seemed dejected and confused. 

Essine goes about ordering the servants and ordering her usher to find their rooms.  Ernatta does not answer, however, dipping into a low curtsey, and soon her entire household has all gone to their knees. She plays innocent and stands after Yadira puts her on the ground to do the same. 

“Your grace,” Yadira’s grip is tighter, and Camille wonders where her father has gone.

“You are the one Ned said tended to the Lady Lyanna?” the King's words are almost a whisper. 

“Yes your grace.” Yadira tone is steady and low and her eyes to the ground. As she looks at the king, she notices his eyes are very blue.

“Give the child to her nurse. We will speak before dinner.” 

Ernatta rises right after Yadira, holding her in her arms, while Yadira follows the king followed by her three handmaids, Eddard and his men not too far behind. Lord Howland commands the rest to get to where they need to be. 

Her rooms, along with her household, are in the Tower of the Hand, given by Lord Arryn for his foster son. A solar and a bedchamber, two large, airy rooms that overlook the city, are all hers, and near her father’s chambers. Ernatta puts her to sleep as soon as she arrives. Camille smiles into the bedding as they close the hangings, slipping from bird to cat to dog to hawk to a little bird following the group of people in a hurry to follow the king, Eddard and ‘that Dornish woman’.

Camille was proud of herself, finding them all at the end of a series of chambers for the king. As Yadira and a few the group go in the room, Yadira’s ladies stand sentinel near the doors with her father’s ushers. Inside is some kind of grand solar. When the door closes, it is only the King, Robert, Eddard, the old man the Lord Hand, and a man of brown hair with a large fish pinned on his clothes. Lord Hoster Tully, she hears him introduce himself. Yadira curtseys deeply, floating down near the floor and floating back up to each man. The king wastes no time with pleasantries.

“Ned tells me you are a healer.”

“Yes your grace. A healer of the Valley.”

“You are far from home, then.”

“Lord Stark requested that I come with him,” she breathed, looking at Robert. She stood while all the others sat at a table looking at her. There was no offer to join them.

“As Ser Arthur summoned you?” Jon Arryn’s words startled Yadira as she turned to him.

“Yes my Lord. To the tower where the Lady Lyanna rested–”

“Where she was a prisoner, you mean to say.” King Robert’s voice held a threat.

“Your grace–” Yadira is still standing, uncomfortable. Would they not give her a chair?

“Where was the prince when you arrived? Did you see him?” Jon continues to question, giving a long look to the king.

“He was not at the tower when I was, your grace.”

“And what did the lady say to you when she saw you?”

“She did not say much. She did not trust me.” 

The king let out a grunt at that pouring himself a drink.

“After I tended to her, the Lady Lyanna warmed. I had stopped the blood she had complained of and-”

“The Lady Lyanna had blood?”

Yadira has a pause, looking at her father. Eddard turned to the king then.

“Robert, you know what was done to her. Mayhaps you do not need the details–” His words ended in a choke.

“No, I want to hear. Speak woman.” Robert waves a large hand at Yadira who nodded.

“It is true your grace that the lady Lyanna had a fever. But she also had lost much blood and had fits before I had come-”

“What did she die from?” Jon interrupts Yadira again, his eyes narrowing. “A fit? A fever? Or too much blood?” The old man seems suspicious, far more focused than the king. Yadira looks as if she would rather be anywhere else. Her father has an odd look on his face, his knuckles white.

“It was all three, my lord.”

“And what would cause all three and cause her to die?” Jon is still pointed as Eddard and Robert seem like they will explode.

“Tansy. Too much of it.”

“Tansy?” Robert’s voice explodes in the room, and Yadira says nothing. Lord Tully breaks the heavy silence.

“Maesters use Tansy is in teas to get rid of a child.” Yadira is quick to reply.

“That is true, my lord.”

“Why would she need that?” Lord Arryn speaks again.

The question made Robert still. Yadira seemed unsure now and looked to her father and Lord Arryn who watched.

 “There was a child, they told me, before I arrived. Ser Arthur and Lady Lyanna both said she had rid herself of it, during one of her escapes–” The King’s face turned from rage to confusion, and then shocked silence. 

“–Ser Arthur sent for me after she had bled.” 

The last of the words came out pleading- none of the other men moved to stop the king as he continued to yell.

“I told you, Robert, you would not like what was said!” Eddard says then, near yelling, as the king near jolts to another part of the room. 

“A child.” The king questions then, wide-eyed, red, and breathless. As Camille flew closer in the room, she sees his hands tremble as they go to his hips, then his head and neck. None of them speak or say anything as they watch him.

“A child...A child! He forced his spawn in her!”

Yadira doesn’t move, holding her hands together and moving them to her heart. “The Lady Lyanna was no woman to take such abuse, I assure you, your grace. She fought.”

Soon, her father has gone to the king as he cries and called for this discussion to end. It is enough, now, he says. The old man seems to believe otherwise. 

“But how does tansy kill a woman if it is in moon tea?” Jon Arryn regarded her cooly as the King seemed to lose his sanity. Her father was angry. 

“If made correctly, moon tea has tansy and other herbs to bring along the… passing of a child. But only in small amounts. If one ingests too much, it causes fits, fever, bleeding, and then-”

Yadira stops to watch as the king shoves items to the floor. Vases and statues shatter, and she edges away from that part of the room. Lord Arryn seems unbothered.

“And then?” Asked Lord Hoster, intent to know. Yadira does not look away from the king.

“Death.” The man went white at the words.

Robert moved to another vase on a small table and threw it into a wall, now sobbing. Yadira seemed to back away, more confident in the distance between her and the king, as Robert raged, throwing and breaking things. Jon stood and tried to calm him, and her father gave a hard unblinking stare to Yadira, who would not meet his eyes.

“How would she know what to do with that?” Yadira makes a face then- that was shocking to Camille.

“I cannot assume where she received such knowledge-”

“You lie,” Robert accuses, his face going from red to purple. “You lie! You are a healer, you know where she found it. You must have given it to her!” He knocks his chair over he moves sure and quick, though Yadira did not move one inch as he came upon her.

Yadira shakes her head and looks to the ground. “I believe it was Ser Arthur. I came after her symptoms from the tansy though I did all I could to heal her. Ser Arthur wrote to me of her symptoms—”

“How would he know how to lose a child?”

Yadira had a pause then. ”He is of the same Valley I am. The same blood as well. We do not keep such things secret.”

”Why would he do such a thing for Lyanna?” The king was still now, staring at this new revelation. No one had told Camille either her uncle had helped her aunt.

“The Lady Lyanna said he was the kindest of her guards.”

“She thought helping him kidnap her was being kind?”

 “She said he allowed her more freedom in that tower than the others, and that he would speak to her, and that he would not hold her down as the prince requested. And when it was time for Prince Rhaegar to leave, she requested he stay.” Yadira held her hands up as if she was hopeless, and nothing left to say. 

”Held her down?”

Robert begins another round of screaming and crushing things when Eddard gives a hard glare and dismisses Yadira, who wastes no time getting out of the room. 

Camille had found her way back to herself and was glad to eat dinner and supper in her father’s rooms without everyone staring at her. in the week after, Camille had found that what Yadira had said displeased her father. At meals, Eddard alternated between talking to his lords and glaring at Yadira, who seemed unbothered by the whole ordeal and his moods, and responded positively to her father's demands as if he was some sort of bratty child. Eddard left her alone otherwise.

The King also gave generously to Eddard, paying for the entire household’s mourning clothes, giving yards and yards of Braavosi cloth: the color of midnight; among other accommodations for people in Eddard’s household. 

The days after the initial meeting, are constant companions of the King: her father is with Robert everywhere, and feeling indulgent in her need to get out of the prison he calls her nursery, brings Camille with him, though Baby Jon must stay in his nursery. She did not miss being that little. Yadira, as her Lady Mistress, always accompanies her–and has found Robert is eager to show her favor. When he had come back from a hunt, he had even asked Yadira to tend to his wounds and told everyone of her ‘Dornish remedies’; he would allow people of the Valley to have what was left of their bones; and other little trifles. This goodness did not extend to her uncle away in the Black cells, a place she had gone in the body of a rat, of all things. Robert was content for him to stay there, forever, if need be.  

In the capital, the mood toward the Dornish followed what the king wanted. They were nice to the people in her household and hostile to those who weren’t. Essine had rolled her eyes at lower ranked men claiming to be in her guard to good treatment. Yadira tells her to punish them quietly. The court still talked. The things the servants whispered they had heard were beyond words. Yadira insisted on a dozen guards wherever they went through it was the gardens or the Godswood only. Her favorite part of the day is being in her governess’ arms, a few steps behind her father and Lord Arryn, on their way to the private meals with the king, their trail of handmaids and grooms behind them, and watching the rest of the court stare. 

Camille thinks the king is nice. He likes to touch her dimples, feeding her nothing but sweetmeats and tosses her so high in the air she shrieks and makes him laugh. She also has new dolls and clothes and jewels, and otherwise, Camille is happy to just talk to Renly, a common sight at whatever meal she has with her father and the King, ever the eager conversationalist amongst all the adults. He tells her about his practices with bows and wooden swords, and it is pleasant to see him so excited about something. Renly even asks about the clothes for her dolls and begs the king to give her more. It didn’t seem right to tell the king no when he insisted.

Yadira tells Essine and Ernatta everything at night: Lord Arryn’s disapproval of them; Lord Hoster’s stubborn ignorance of their presence and discussions with her father at sending her away; Lord Stannis the king’s other brother who never smiles. As for the man Lord Lannister, or Tywin, he might have well-been spit on, the way she would say his name. a few nights ago, after they place her in bed, Yadira enthusiastically recounts that Lord Eddard had fought the match between the Lannisters and the king still, and for once her ladies seemed content with her father’s actions.

Only a few days later, during her time exploring the castle and running around her uncle’s cell, she comes across the King and his Hand in a tower debating, her father somewhere else. They across from each other, a flagon of wine, with cheese and fruit between them. It is plain compared to every other meal.

“Robert, you must not give permission.”

 “And why should I not? Am I not King now Jon?”

“Lord Tywin and Eddard hate each other courteously. One ill look at the bastard-”

“Ned is in grief Jon, as am I. He has lost his father, brother, and his sister in a year. All that is left of his kin is his younger brother, and the son Hoster’s daughter gave. Do you blame him for keeping the child close?”

“The sight of the child angers Lord Hoster, Robert.”

“The bastard is the last piece of what he wanted for his life. He had to give up the mother, Jon, have a care! You know he had already started his quest for the Dornish girl before the war broke out.”

Jon Arryn sighs, sipping from his cup, and the king indulges as a squire, or page, filling his large goblet.

“And for Lord Tully,” Robert laughs, “You both married his daughters, is that not payment enough? You know Ned’s ways. He will dig his heels in and leave, Jon, I will not have that. Not now, after what has happened to Lyanna. Not when I have to marry. I want him here.”

“It is an insult–”

“What offense does the girl give? She has barely found her feet! I have made my decision. They all had their way with weddings and the positions and the money. I want this. I command it.”

What Robert had commanded had no challenges, and though it seemed a petty victory, Camille recognized it was important for her: she could attend at the royal wedding and festivities. 

 


	7. Chapter 6

 

 

The kindness the king had for Yadira did not extend to Camille's uncle. Arthur's punishment was to be announced soon, and even after an attempt by her father to convince Robert otherwise, the king was determined to condemn him.

Eddard was able to get Arthur released from the Black Cells so that he could sleep in a clean room with windows and a privy, but that was it. The only people allowed to see Arthur were Baratheon men watched and guarded this room constantly, and Arthur was allowed to wear the linen clothes the smallfolk would wear. No silks of any kind or even Dornish style robes. Everyone in Camille's household shows their worry differently: Yadira barks orders; Essine stares out windows in long silences, Ernatta sniffles. They fear one night his guards will 'fall asleep' or 'be overcome', and Arthur will find his end as Princess Elia and her children did. After hearing about Lord Lannister and the king and the bloody bodies, she worries too.

Worse, Camille could not see what was happening in the Great Hall. Before, in the Black cells and the bedchamber, she would have to scurry around as a rat, and see him, and watch him until she woke. She heard Arthur's prayers, and listened to his silences, and watched as he trained, and grew tired as he ate. He was still there now as he waited like everyone else did Robert's decision. Camille did not want him to die. She had begun to like her uncle, and Camille knew it would make her mother cry.

Camille and all the household for ordered to stay in her rooms by Eddard, and though they try to preoccupy her, it is them that are distracted. Essine soon gives in with her watery eyes and sniffles, crushing the small bubble of quiet in the room. Camille tries to just focus on her cousins, Theryse and Aurelia, and they talk. It is all gestures and sounds, and common sense. Before Essine begins to completely cry, Yadira announces to them all that there would be no formal lessons today. Camille sighed in relief, happy to be free of the torture Yadira does with the sitting and waving curtseys.

They seem to all languish quietly in their seats in her airy room before when her usher Ladron, Ernatta's husband, bolts in with the squire, her cousin Felix, close behind him.

He is here to deliver the news. Camille looks only briefly as Essine turns to him dabbing at her eyes across from Yadira before he starts.

Felix recites the story: the court was full of people, and he stood near Lord Stark while waiting for the king to announce his decision. He waited until the very end. Half the court was in disbelief and the other half rejoiced, depending on whom they are sworn to. Lord Stark was stone. Eddard told him to take the official notice of the king and go immediately to his lady Aunt Yadira. His dejected face puts everyone in the room- all her ladies, and the servants–into a low mood.

Essine takes the letter first, before ordering him back to Lord Stark and to stay out of trouble. Felix bows once to her, then to Yadira, and then to his mother, and leaves. After his departure, Essine unfolds the paper in the royal seal in her hands. There is a silent moment as she reads it, her face without emotion.

"He will not die," she intones. It was a strange thing to say, Camille thought. Yadira must have thought the same because she extends her hand for the letter. She watches Yadira's eyes as she reads the letter once, twice, thrice, and folds the paper up. She calls for Viana, one o her other handmaids, to go to the kitchens and gather as much food as possible, and for Odall, further back on the wall, and to have the letter resealed, and go with guards to send it to her Aunt in Starfall. Ariadne should know of her son's fate first. She insists. Everyone else watches in confusion, while she and Theryse and Aurelia play with their dolls momentarily forgotten.

"Ser Arthur has been removed from the Kingsguard, stripped of his knighthood, and for his actions during the war, will do penance in the Camlone Septry."

"Camlone Septry? I have not heard of that Sept before." Ernatta murmurs, looking around for someone to say what they know. She is leaning forward on the settee—something Yadira would never let her do—staring as Odall gathered an usher and six guards, both Dayne and Stark, hurrying away.

"That is the point, I believe. Our cousin will be far from our reach now."

Essine was more vocal in this, protesting the removal of his knighthood— he was the one to call for Yadira to save Lyanna Stark, and this is how he is treated? What of the  _Lannister_? Was his father's gold that valuable? Yadira orders everyone back to their work, having Ernatta send them for a nap, and pulling Essine close into a closet, hushing her. Camille was glad for the nap to check on her uncle again. In her bed Essine and Ypolita sit next to each other on stools as they are encircled by airy silk hangings and with a little smile, slips from sparrow to cat to another little bird, to get to her uncle.

The king had not waited before sending Arthur to his imprisonment. It was already midday, the sun slowly descending, without a single cloud in the sky to block the burning light. Yadira had hurried to get to the yard, a basket in the hands of her youngest handmaid, the auburn-haired Aldoryssa. Camille has to slip into a greyhound to watch her uncle be escorted by a dozen men, her governess not far behind. He would not even have proper transportation—it looked like one of the wayns used those wretched souls in the country. Yadira had forcefully declared she was permitted by Lord Stark to say goodbye to her cousin, and the Stark men she took had the guards allow it. But only barely, standing out in a sort of halo, as if Yadira would pull out a sword and slay them all herself.

Her governess gave a single circular look on the cart, and could barely hold her disdain, while Aldoryssa seemed to struggle with the basket. Yadira calls for him to be unchained—he has no weapons—and the gaoler sneers but does it regardless. Yadira, and her maid give him a long glare until he backs away, and a Dayne guard takes his place after she gestures. Yadira takes the basket from her handmaid and she steps back, as Yadira places it in his lap. Now a little bird on the cart, she sees her uncle sort through the food, and spots a small bag of leather as it easily undoes itself.  _Gold and silver and copper._

"This is for the servants," he says under his breath. Yadira just gives a half smile, patting his hand.

"We want you to be well fed on your way to the sept."

"I will not need it."

"A precaution. The weather will not always be as fair as today, cousin."

"Do not—" Yadira puts the cloth over the food, and kisses both cheeks.

"You must go to uncle in Braavos, or my nanna in Pentos," she whispers, pulling away.

The driver of the cart shoos people away as he prepares to head out of the yard. Arthur looks alarmed as the cart begins to move slowly.

"They expect you to fight it,"

Yadira keeps the slow pace, a saunter as he begins to move away. Aldoryssa quickly stays a few paces behind her as she does. The dust kicks up leaving swirls against her black gown. "Do you have anything else you would like to say?" Her voice carries over the noise.

"Tell the king to get better cats. The rats scurried around my cell and door every night."

Yadira lets out a laugh, and then regains her decorum, waiting until he is out of sight in the crowds of the city. Camille feels terribly embarrassed.

From what Camille could gather in her wanderings the days afterward, the Camlone Septry was a small community at the tip of the Seaan Peninsula. At Camlone her uncle would work gardens and fields and 'hold his peace unless in prayer' what she later found out meant was utter silence unless praying. That seemed horrific to Camille.

The most interesting fact to her was that the sept was in the lands of House Mallister in the Riverlands. That was where Hoster ruled, she remembered, and Camille wondered if he had anything to do with where he was sentenced. Essine certainly did and told Yadira so. Not that it changed her governess' moods at meals toward him. It was unbearable to Camille. Yadira was polite and smiling as ever, even giving grateful words to the king for his mercy. Either way, she wondered what her mother would do when she heard the news.

Other news from court said the Hand was more interested in the wedding than the king. She believed it. Her father held little interest in the Lannisters, seeming to look through the man, and his son Jaime, and the king fed off of that. Soon enough the soon to be queen was arriving, and it was all the court would speak of. Camille did not even get to see the new queen arrive, stuck in her rooms with her lessons and Baby Jon.

Yadira had attended, though, that and the welcoming feast, and the next morning as she was being bathed, Yadira told everyone about it in rapid Dornish. Ernatta was to bathe her as Essine held her towels, and Ypolita the platter for the combs and creams. Yadira sat on a stool while her ladies held her clothes—a stiff gown of Braavosi cloth, a raisin colored samite undergown and soft linen shift of sheer silver and a platter with all her jewels. They laughed at the story while she and Theryse and Aurelia played in the tub more than bathed.

"You say the streets were empty?" Ernatta says, putting a pan of water over her head.

"I said half empty," Yadira giggled. "Lord Lannister's men were cheering for her, though the smallfolk of the city seemed less enthused."

"And what did she do?"

"Well, she pretended that she didn't care. So did her father, but everyone else saw."

"What did they expect after what he did?"

"For them to be grateful he let them watch her 'joyous entry' into the city. I struggled to keep my face the entire time."

"No. You?" Essine bit her lip in laughter. "And Lord Stark?"

"Oh, as flint faced as ever," Yadira said with a glance at Essine. "But we stood so long for everyone arrive, I know I saw him count everyone in the crowd."

The women all giggle.

"But the king-"

"The king doesn't care, he wants her gold, and the Hand her father's peace to not turn cloak again." Camille agreed, remembering the way the king seemed to like every woman he saw, and the words of reasoning Jon Arryn had to give the king about the marriage.

"Come now, cousin. You know women with yellow cunt hair are always a favorite." Essine whispered the end, but Camille had heard it and couldn't help her own laugh then, deciding to mess with her ladies.

"Cunt! Cunt!"

The ladies all gasped at once coming close to the tub chiding to not repeat that word. Camille gave a naughty smile and went back to her floating boats in the tub. With the look Yadira gave Essie, she giggled at her joke. It was fun to be a baby sometimes.

Camille was clean now, but the water was still warm. She was enjoying the relief in her small closet from everyone, even her father's people, who watched them without blinking it felt like. Soon her cousins were taken out of the tub and dried, Ernatta getting the creams from Odall. The other handmaids took Theryse and Aurelia out to the bedchamber to change. It was then when she was splashing she straightened her hand and watched as the sudsy water seemed to part along the line she made and curve up like soft clay. She was in awe. Camille had never done this before. Her whole body tingled.

"Lyarra."

Camille released her hand, the feeling quickly leaving and the water splashing down. Camille slowly looked up to her governess. Yadira stood there, clutching her towel, eyes wide.

"I knew," she said, and went to her, pulling her up and kissing her face. "I knew, my little one. You are like us." Camille trembled in her arms.  _Like who?_  Yadira had grabbed her hands then and as she dried her spoke softly of the Rhoynar and their water witches. What they did. What she did. What Yadira would teach her. As much relief as she felt, it was not all she could do, but she was not going to ruin this. Somehow Camille had gotten lucky.

Eddard visited her every day for prayer. His visits were the only break from her daily schedule of Yadira's morning torture, and she otherwise had meals talking to Renly or Lord Howland, and being fitted for clothes with Theryse and Aurelia. During prayer, Camille learned to recite what little her father did in the godswood, wooded and silent. It was strange and lulling and it made her sleep heavily when she was finished. It was the forests and the sea and castles she saw in these dreams and she felt unable to stop them, and unable to leave, like she did when she would slip into animals. Yadira would watch her grogginess and give her little smiles in return. It was the gift growing, she would insist.

Meanwhile, she had also been busy for her household for the upcoming wedding, gaining the richest fabrics as she served 'The King's Beloved Brother Lord Stark'. Whatever they felt about Eddard, Camille was shocked how much her kin used his name to get what they wanted. The goldsmiths too eager to comply, and the merchants too happy to give them their wares. Yadira had chosen aquamarines for the occasion. She also had Camille fitted for seven black gowns of Braavosi cloth, more under gowns of purple in shades of mulberry, plum, and eggplant and new translucent shifts. There were no words for the awe of the handmaids when a triple-pile velvet damask the color of silver and white had been delivered. Yadira, Ernatta, and Odall would all wear the cloth with Camille for the wedding. Odall fainted she was so excited. Yadira's other two handmaids wept at being left out.

While she enjoyed dressing up, Ypolita told all of her gossip from the court: Lady Cersei's party had already started their quest for power. First was a complaint about living in the Maiden's vault until the wedding, which Jon Arryn had said only the queen resides in the Queen's side. Then there had been a debate between her aunts Genna, Rohanne, and Cerissa, and the king's women of the court, mainly his cousins and older aunts. It was about who would have what positions in the queen's household. Jon had ended that, saying that the king still is undecided on the structure of the Queen's Court. He did not want to be so much like the dragons. And then there were those who brawled, and the drunken exploits of all those living int he city, and the wagers on who would win the tourney which many people betted on Ser Jaime Lannister.

On the morning of the wedding, Camille was scrubbed pink and perfumed with her mother's scent, and then dressed by her handmaids, while Yadira recited what the day entailed and her expectations. Camille was dressed soft white translucent linens, then an eggplant-colored undergown of satin with jewels crusted all on the cuffs and up the sleeve of yellow gems, and then her plush white velvet gown, with hanging sleeves that had only two inches above the ground. For her jewels, they were gold, with aquamarines pinned in her hair, on her forehead, in her ears, with the rest in a choker, necklace, on her wrists, and fingers. When Camille looked in the mirror, she could only stare at her reflection. She had forgotten how she had looked. She did not recognize herself. Camille's skin was too light, her curls too loose, her eyes startling. Essine had noticed her staring into the mirror and chuckled.

"Vain at two," she laughed. "A true Dayne."

Yadira agreed, and she shied from the mirror then.

It was then she, Yadira, Ernatta, and Odall were all put into a great litter drawn by two horses in the front and two in the back, sheer coverings of silver fluttering as they were surrounded by men with armed with swords, shorter swords, and axes, all frightening looking. Eddard was leading the group on his horse, with Lord Howland, and other lords just behind him. Yadira gave instructions on what to do, what to say, and to always smile, and Camille greeted them all in the perfect courtesy a two-year-old could, and they gave the smiles she expected, amused by her. On the way to the Great Sept of Baelor, Camille preoccupied herself with looking outside at the city. They held the pomander in front of her nose to block the smell as they passed through certain areas. This world endlessly fascinated Camille. The clothes they wore, their homes, the food, and the items they sold in the market place, it was surreal. Ernatta spoke to Odall and Yadira, letting her stare out to the streets. So long as she wasn't trapped in the walls of her nursery, Camille would not give them much trouble.

They all murmured in Dornish at the crowds. It looked full enough for her, but Yadira insisted that you could barely move during Princess Elia's wedding, everyone from both sides of the narrow sea ready to watch her ceremony. People didn't throw very many flowers either, she insisted, or cheer so for the Lannister girl and the west in all their finery was near tacky, insisted Odall. Camille had to admit the people who had arrived with the queen wore a great deal of jewelry and fabrics with long trails and wide sleeves that used a lot of bulky fabric.

They ascended up the hill to the Great Sept. There the dome of glass and gold is set off by seven crystal towers, each of which had a bell that vibrated through her body as they rung. Being held by Yadira, they are one of the few who were allowed on the platform with the king, looking down at all the others. The High Septon, with a large crystal crown and cloth of gold robes, gives longs prayers and leads them through the doors into and underneath suspended globes of colored glass. Through this hall of rainbow light, they enter through another set of the double-doors, being greeted by seven broad aisles, great windows of colored glass, and candles abound.

The greatest amount of candles is by the stature of the father and the mother, where their small party, following Eddard, goes to until they are at the very front of the steps directly beneath the place where the king waits.

The people all have their murmur as they file in and wait, Robert standing high up between the statues, handsome beyond belief in his black velvets and cloth of gold and his crown. Renly was not too far away, and Camille gave a grin at the sight–he was in the same colors, though much less impressive being a child. He smiled back when he saw her. Stannis stood beside him, but she didn't bother to look that high. He scowled enough at her.

Soon after the doors opened.

Tywin stood tall in crimson silks, lions roaring all around his clothes, rings on every finger, gilded in gold. Lady Cersei stood in a cloth of gold dress slashed with crimson silk- every corner and crease in the dress had gems, and in her hair were a hundred gold pieces and rubies that glittered. A thick necklace was around Cersei's neck of a lion, and other lesser ropes of gold handing upon her gown, or in between her breasts in the low cut front. She was as gilded in gold as her father, and behind them, a flood of girls had come holding an extremely long train, all dressed in crimson gowns slashed with cloth of gold and gleaming tiaras. When Lord Lannister lets go of Cersei so she may ascend the stairs, the handmaids spread her great train upon the steps, and then the floor, and then the aisle. She had counted forty-nine maids.

In her head, Camille recited what she remembered of her favorite songs from earth: the ceremony lasted an _eternity_. Robert and Cersei had begun their ceremony and said the seven vows, with the seven blessings invoked, and the seven promises exchanged. Longer than her graduations, waiting at the DMV, or waiting during layovers between flights. When the wedding song had been sung, the challenge was invoked, but no one said a word.

Robert removed the red cloak from Cersei and received a folded cloth from Stannis, who maneuvered around the long trail of the gown. The entire sept roared its cheers as they kissed.

The feast after the wedding lasted long after Camille had become full, getting a sample of each dish as she always did. They allowed her to sit next to her father on the high dais, both of them changed into the cloth of silver robes and matching jewelry. The singers sang, the fools played, and bears danced as everyone laughed. At the sight of Lord Hoster's frown in the celebrations, Camille could only give a dimpled smile.

 


	8. Chapter Seven

 

 

 

 

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

 

 

 

The city had come out in droves during their departure. Nobles weighed down by their heavy gold jewelry and fine fabrics to the dredges of Flea Bottom with their haunting, hollow faces all lined the streets, leaning over balcony rails and perched on terracotta roofs and pushing away stray dogs as they watched the men on horses and the silk-covered litters move toward the Dragon Gate.

The entire Crownlands still seemed to experience the joy of the wedding along with the drawn-out tourney after. There seemed to be only smiles as far as she saw on the street, but Camille could spy as she slipped from sparrow to pigeon to starlings that further back there were those who still had to work along with their ragged children did not quite feel the same. The bolder barefoot ones ran along the procession. Camille would lift the pieces of white cloth of gold and silver satin to see them and when Yadira saw their peering faces, she closed the small window over the door and ordered Ernatta to do the same. Aldoryssa only gave a soft smile to her as she stared at her governess. Yadira never hid that she did not have much love for the small folk.

_How different her life would be if she were born like most of the world,_ she thought, _like in her past life_.

Baby Jon was with his nurse and ladies in the litter right behind them, but Eddard rode at the head of the party, a standard bearer with the wolf of Stark snapping in the wind as he said goodbye to the King. Robert himself seemed as if he would cry. He laughed and hugged Camille’s father at least seven times while all of their men stood in gleaming polished plate as they waited in the heat. Glover and Royce and Egen and Flint and others she did not remember with many other lords stood with them all waiting. But it was Jon Arryn who ended it at the command he writes along the way and to greet his young wife joyfully for him, until he sent for her. and as he said goodbye, there was a knock on Yadira’s window.

Looking through the screen, she saw a man in lilac and white, and Yadira barely looked at him as she received a parcel wrapped in silk string. She snapped it closed with a nod to the man who had disappeared as quickly as he came. Yadira opened it quickly, and a smile appeared as a gold chain and pendant dropped to her lap, and Camille spied lilac wax on the parchment. Her grandmother Ariadne must have written back.

Cracking the seal, Yadira smiled more broadly as she read. “A letter from your mother Arra!”

“Mamma?” Camille had perked up. She had wondered what took Ashara so long to write. Camille missed her, and her hugs, and the bitter teas she liked to drink. She missed Starfall most of all. Camille had found this place a terrible assault on her nose and it didn’t matter how much seasoning was on meat if it wasn’t cooked well. Camille didn’t care if it was the king’s favorite dishes- she was desperate to drink her mother’s favorite bitter tea just for the comfort.

“Oh yes. Your mother says she is most pleased by your lessons, and your progress in your courtesies.  She misses you, her little love, greatly.” She held the letter tight with a broad smile. A nervous one, if Camille knew her governess, and she thought she did. She wanted to read the letter herself—Yadira was clever enough to omit things as she did with her father when recounting Camille and Baby Jon’s day, and maybe to the king.

“I want to see.” Her voice was childish and high-pitched, and Yadira smiled when she stuck out her hand. Instead of the letter, she placed what was actually a locket in her hand instead. The chain was fine gold with pearls, and the locket was then grabbed by Ernatta who opened it for her. In vivid colors was her mother in some semi-realist form of painting, and at that moment, Camille longed for cameras. But it was still her mother and she would take it.

“Mamma,” Camille said, holding it. Her eyes were at least the correct shade of violet. she fought a sigh. Ashara was so far away. Ernatta instead placed it around her neck, where Camille held onto it as she clasped it.

“What a beautiful sight,” Yadira said, tucking the parchments and staring into her robes. Aldoryssa agreed. Camille still wanted the letter, and as they moved to the rolling fields surrounding the King’s Road, she was determined to get it.

Camille had taken to the sky as soon as they allowed her to doze off. The dove she had found went through the wide sky of pinks and blues and purples, as she looked over the last of the city and its ladies laced in their stiff silks, the lords and their ropes of gold, and the twisting streets with all the many faces of the small folk. She watched for a moment as the Great Sept stood with its towers spearing the sky glimmering against the morning sun and the seagulls cawed by the Blackwater Rush, then turned away.

Like all other travel, it lasted for days in a similar pattern. The sun woke them in the morning, brightening the sky to a pale blue and dogged them with heat all afternoon, until the sky dyed itself golden orange and bronze and let the moon have its time in the sky.

Camille still could not get the parchment, and went she had gotten to Yadira’s cloak, far from her ladies reach, Eddard gave her a grin for her sense of adventure and watched as he sternly reminded Yadira to mind her. Yadira seemed alarmed she was even in her tent, let alone rummaging through a cloak to which she only gave her classic smile. Ernatta has received a tongue lashing from Yadira after she had left, and in guilt, she had stayed near her and her cousins for some time. Later that night she watched Yadira tend to her own fire and knew then that it was long gone.

As the days came and went, Eddard finally had relief that her litter and palfreys were much more efficient than any wheelhouse, though the cramped legs of her ladies said otherwise. They had crossed the slow-flowing streams and rolling grasslands listening to people sing, and watching them dance and otherwise make merry. Those that did not had no place near her and her baby brother. Lord Howland saw to that.

The country had a loud rummaging sound during the day, with the trail of lords and servants and carts that followed them. On their breaks, Yadira would lead her and her brother with their ladies to beautiful marshes where the birds seemed to rush from the reeds with shrill calls and horses thundered by on small trails. Camille played among the tall grasses and thick mud and its wildflowers, feeling the breeze sweep over her as she tried to make her own garland of pink flowers. It was peaceful, and in the midst of the wind, she touched her pendant. She had wished her mother was here. Ashara liked to be outside in the sun.

One night, during the night symphony of clattering cicadas and droning crickets and croaking frogs, Yadira had nodded to Ernatta, wrapping Camille in her bed robe, then a cloak, and carried her past the roaring fire where the lords and her father sat drinking and talking. Further from the camp, the sky blinked with lights more vivid than anything Camille remembered in her past life. She did not think the stars could all shine so bright.

Yadira has taken her to the edge of a river, letting her feet sink in the mud, and told her of their ways, the Rhoynar. How they lived on the greatest river, the Rhoyne, which was greater than any river in Westeros, and how their water wizards put spells in the river for boats and fountains and baths. She could only stare and grasp tightly to her leg as Yadira knelt and watch as she placed her palm near the water to make it smooth and still as glass. She could feel her fingers tingle then her forearms and then her neck as Yadira then raised the water like a fountain, and then drop it, giving her a grin. When she divided the water to the river bed, revealing he pebbles and flora, she gasped, her whole body shivering from the feeling.

Camille’s heart raced and her hands shook as Yadira encouraged her to try, but she could only make the water ripple if that wasn’t her leg moving. Yadira, much out of her stern nature, giggled and encouraged her attempt. Those nights would be few on the journey, but she loved them the most.

But now Camille was on a pony of her own with two grooms to watch her. Her father had no problem with her getting used to riding and was happy enough to see her preoccupied rather than running away. Her two grooms led her on a slow pace to the Crossroads Inn, Theryse and Aurelia riding with their father or Yadira. They had passed the meandering loops of rivers and sandbars to this place; the terns flying overhead and the air fresh and sweet.  She could only smile and laugh as she and her cousins rode, Yadira and Essine and their ladies all laughing at their excitement. Just outside of their bubble however, were hundreds of guards and armed men.

Essine and Yadira had spoken several times with each other and the household about travel — these lands used to belong to House Darry, but with the king’s new decree it had gone to the Vyprens, who were to host them up the road in a few days. They had been slow enough to end up in the middle of the group, Eddard and her brother at the front still when a rider had come to them and quickly.

He had yelled to them first, which had earned both Essie and Yadira’s ire, commanding them to the front, and to change immediately. She had looked to them all in confusion as she heard this and threw her arms to Ypolita riding beside her in response. She needed to see what was happening.

There was no time however, as Yadira, Essine, and the rider pulled apart as quick as they came together, and their commands came out at once as the man went back to the front. The Lady Stark, and her sister, the Lady Arryn, were to arrive today at the inn, far ahead of Eddard’s arranged itinerary.

Essine had soon rode ahead with her ushers as they put her and her cousins into litters and rode roughly up the road Yadira sat all the while still as stone as Odall sighed and Ernatta fussed with her clothes. They spoke in hushed tones, the rolling tongue coming quickly. Hardly anyone around them spoke Dornish so there was no risk: what Dornishmen would tell their words to a northron after the war?

As Camille quietly played with a doll, Yadira was quick about releasing her feelings.

“There is no doubt this was some plot by Lord _Fish_ after our stay in the capital. The Lady Stark was to meet us at the Twins.”

“Do you believe the Lady Stark shall give us great trouble? After the queen had allowed us at the feasts?” Odall’s worried look made Yadira sigh.

“The queen did not see us, Oda. It hardly mattered. She has her crown. But in the Riverlands, they worship their Paramount, I know. That love passes to the children.”

 Ernatta shrugged. “It makes sense they would do so. Her sister must come up the High Road. It seemed more than passing queer Lord Stark did not want to meet her here, instead.”

Yadira gave a sneer at her words but Ernatta kept going.  

“Lord Tully felt slighted at Camille’s presence. Not that he should be, but northrons are sensitive about natural children.”

“In truth, they seem to be sensitive about everything,” Odall blurted, earning a smile from Yadira.

“It is true, I should have expected it,” she admitted, “He hardly held back his distaste at the suppers or rides.”

Yadira let out a sigh.

“I am worried what will happen here in the north. I would rather she had met us where Lord Stark rules, not her father.”

They both agreed.

The inn was swarming with people when they arrived. Knights and men went back and forth, and Camille’s ushers and her father’s too were out of sight- it took one of her father’s gentlemen, a Waterman, to get to her nursery. The inn was three stories tall with turrets and stone chimneys of white stone, and in her rooms, she had a hearth. It was then that Lord Howland had come and told Yadira that it was best if she napped during the initial greeting, and Yadira nodded in agreement. She made Camille practice her courtesies instead and had Ypolita ready her best gown and jewels.

They forced Camille to stay her nursery and only had the words of a page to report the event. She only needed to see Yadira’s stillness and Essine’s third cup of wine to know that trouble was coming. Soon enough they were escorted for their meal in the inn. Yadira had her dressed in a stiff cloth of gold gown with pearls and moonstones, a white samite undergown and a sheer silkshift the color of silver; her trail was long. She had gold everywhere: the pins of amethysts in her hair, her bangles at her wrists, her three necklaces. Yadira repeated three times it was very important she is polite to her father’s wife and her family, and with how her gown weighed her down, she didn’t doubt it.

Ladron took them down the cramped stairs. He gave a grin at the sight of them, as Yadira held her dressed in her own cloth of silver gown covered in jewels. At the bottom floor there was a throng of people all talking, and at the sight of Camille, it turned a murmur. Yadira had placed her on the ground, and with a final look she found the expected path they made when the people parted, a thousand eyes fixed upon her. Camille could not even see the ceiling as she stared around. She hated being a baby.

“Make way for the Lady Lyarra!” The herald startled her, and she froze for a moment until he finished, and then she moved forward to the front of the crowd. Everyone, with wheat and birds and swords and circles, men in chains, and a naked woman on their breasts and many more, gave curtseys and bows. She still could not see her father, and Camille held her hands together in front of her stomach like she had practiced–she needed to, so they would not see her shake. Camille had not even done this for the queen!

As she stepped forward Camille glanced around to see the giants, the gator, the horses and frogs, and at a table sat her father, dressed in a burgundy doublet with immaculate silver embroidery, and two red-headed women, both pale with blue eyes, and emotionless in gowns of red and blue. An older man of greying brown hair with a severe look similar to Stannis also sat to the left of the younger sister, in armor that looked like literal fish smells.

Camille executed her routine. She floated into her curtsey, as much as a child could, and weighed down underneath these heavy clothes. Three more steps forward she curtseyed again, this time Yadira with her. Her father had rose then, and she looked at him from under her lashes to see him.  At that, he had given a slight grin, though the women and the old man frowned.

“You have risen from your rest then, my little Arra?”

Camille gave Eddard her best smile, feeling her dimples in her cheeks. The northerners who had grown used to the sight of her gave a little murmur at it.

“Yes father,” she said, rising and taking only a step forward. Her voice was still high-pitched as ever. “But I spent more time practicing.” There were titters at that, and Eddard had nodded then at her earnest look with a grin, commanding Yadira to rise.

“Good. Come forward and present yourself.”

He had turned then to the woman next to him, the older sister, who had her face as expressionless as possible. Her red gown had bits of yellow in it along the seams and ends, and her hair was a vivid red wrapped in ribbons. She was pretty.

“It is an honor to meet you Lady Stark,” Camille smiled, curtseying again. She gave her famous smile and walked forward again.  

“Welcome, Lady Lyarra.” She had given only a curt nod. Undeterred, Camille had turned to her sister, the Lady Lysa, and gave a similar greeting. Lysa’s greeting was just as short as her sister’s. Camille had turned then, the older man, and hesitated. She didn’t know who he was. She assumed he was a knight, however.

“Well met good ser,” Camille never let her smile fall. The old man merely nodded. _How rude._ To her delight, there was a red-haired squealer, just like Jon in a septa’s arms, that Catelyn took notice of when he gurgled.

“That is my brother?”

Turing to her father, holding her smile, she let out a childish giggle, turning the studious look Eddard was giving the women over her head into a smile. He nodded. “Yes, Robb.”

“He is like Jon,” she insisted. The crowd murmured at that as Eddard nodded again. _Where was Jon?_

The thought left Camille’s mind quickly, as Eddard had picked her up then, commanding everyone to eat, and where she sat next to her father her carver behind her cutting her meat for her to eat. All the while her blood was rushing. Eddard’s wife did not like her, she realized. In fact, as they traveled north, delayed by a large number of lords and ladies in their retinues, she found that none of the riverine people did. Yadira was right.

That event had permanently altered her governess, and she was now always stiff as stone, flawlessly formal, and no longer taking her at night to the water. The riverlords and ladies ‘watched everything they did and got in the way’ Essine complained in their tent, and Camille agreed but cared little. She had snuck away twice to see him and once throwing a fit three tents down before one of his men had carried her to him.

Camille found her patience was wearing away with these people as she heard of her household’s trouble: the riverine people glared at them during meals, harassed the handmaids, argued with the stablemen, and even began a fight with her guards (they won, of course). Lord Stark would only settle them and punish them lightly and send them away from his part of the camp. She was grateful when the older man, their uncle, and the sister had left with a large group of men, but it had solved no problems.

Camile had finished with her lessons for the day, tapping her clavichord randomly until Ypolita put her in her favor bed robe of the cream and gold and a nightcap for her hair, and taken by Yadira to her father.

The crickets and cicadas sung, and the stars glittered, and through several yawns, she was grateful she didn’t have to walk. However outside her father’s tent were men in fish scale armor and women talking quietly. They all stared as they entered, Yadira giving smiled to the Northmen as they allowed her in while the riverine people stared and whispered.

It was a great shock to find her father was not ready for bed- Eddard was supposed to read her a book tonight, and then she would lie in the best bed for miles around and be cuddled by her father. It was quality time, something she valued. That, and the feather bed.

Eddard was instead sitting and drinking with her step-mother, Robb in her lap, a drooling mess, across a long table between them.

“Well met my lords. My lady,” Yadira bowed, so she did too. But it was more of a bob. Luckily Yadira was not focused on her, looking over all the people in the tent.  camille did the same. Four of her father’s men and two grooms were working behind a silk wall, while two handmaids waited far behind Catelyn’s chair.  At the sight of her, her father smiled.

“I had forgotten. It is our night, isn’t it Arra?”

“ _Your night_?” the Lady Catelyn had looked between them in confusion.

“I read to Lyarra, and she stays with me for the night, my lady.”

Catelyn had given a nod and smile, rising then. Camille did not like how she looked at her as she did so. 

“Will you stay Lady Catelyn? With my brother as well?” The Lady Catelyn seemed to freeze at her words and looked to her father. Camille did not want to do the whole Cinderella thing. She would rather they got along. What better way than a bed-time story?

“It is your choice.”

 Her father had gestured for the book and his grooms as he readied to bathe and change. From the way he had gotten up, distant and formal, it did not look as if he thought she would stay.

“Please stay Lady Catelyn, this is the story of the Knight of the Red Lake,” she was not above a little begging, making her eyes big, and pouting as she did so. It worked on her father and many other too.

The Lady Catelyn had only summoned her ladies and handmaids from outside, and handed her brother over to them, while having a cloak wrapped about her. She had not even looked at Camille as she had left, giving a cool goodbye to her father.

 


	9. Chapter 8

The dawn had come with gold orange light bursting behind the great twisting sentinels of cypresses in the Neck. Where the Riverlands were green and fertile, this place was bog and unpredictable and was called home by Lord Howland, who rode his horse in a smooth amble beside Camille and her ladies in the litter.

Their intense pace taken from the capital had slowed to a more relaxed pace once they had officially stepped foot in the north. The northmen were all relieved to be close to home, and Eddard felt the same. During most of their trip past the Frey's lands, Eddard kept to Lord Howland, his closest confidant, who gave commands at the state of tents and travel as they traversed to Moat Cailin.

"This narrow causeway is the safest way through the neck," Lord Howland said through the window, giving a smile as she looked behind him to the bright flowers of peach and pale green and the moss that hung from the trees. He held one hand on his reins while the other pointed to other flora that looked pre-historic in size, and lethality, when Howland mentioned the poison they could hold.

"And the driest," commented Lord Arik Waterman. Before Camille had known him to just be one of her father's grooms of the chamber, but he was also apparently a cousin through a mother who was born a Stark. He had mentioned to Yadira that there were many of the insignificant Starks in the north. He had a wide mouth and a startlingly large nose, with ash blonde hair and brown eyes. They always held some sort of joke in them whenever he looked at you. It made Camille feel uncomfortable to be around him too long.

Lord Howland only nodded in response and otherwise ignored him, going back again to his lessons of the bar-tailed godwits, ringed plovers, and dark-bellied brent geese. Far beyond him to the east, Howland mentioned the bleak shores of the Bite, a cold salt sea, and then to the west were the more dangerous swamps and bogs, impassible and deadly. Camille could only shiver into her furs with Ernatta at the sound of it. Lord Howland terrified her with the few stories he told of men, southern and northern, dying in them during wars.

"But do not worry my lady. There is Moat Cailin," Howland teased, knocking his knuckles on her screen. She didn't know what that was and Camille asked him of it. Waterman interrupted instead.

"It is naught but ruins, my lady." His eyes held that same look that made her only look at him for a moment before turning back to Howland. He gave her a wide smile instead.

"Aye, ruins that have held off thousands for centuries," Howland added, mentioning that there was one tower that leaned, and how old it was. It had held the north for centuries. It and his people who made havoc with any survivor that made it through the Neck from the south.

A silence had come then, natural and slow and Camille had begun to doze off. Soon enough, Lord Howland had begun to sing. It had given her a shock of energy, it grew in her belly then spread out to her finger and toes and made her lurch up. It certainly shocked Odall who shrieked at her sudden movement, scaring the others outside. Yadira waved the men off looking in, patting Odall a moment, and then giving her a look.

"What did you see?" Yadira inquired with her, but Camille quickly lied, mentioning a bug, and embarrassed, crawled into Ernatta's arms. She saw the women all exchange glances as they checked the litter the door and made sure the screens were locked tight against the shiny blue beetles they saw everywhere. Lord Howland insisted that the oil they placed on the wood discouraged them, and Waterman that she needed milk to ease her into her mid-day rest, and Yadira agreed pleasantly, and then ignored them, speaking softly in Dornish about all they saw.

That peace did not last long of course, because as soon as Lord Howland began to sing again, she felt the strange racing in her veins and asked him what he was singing. Howland had obliged, mentioning the hymn he learned for the neck and other tales of his songs that they sung during wars and hard times. Lord Waterman interrupted again. "Yes, and a hundred greenseers used the hammer of the waters to fill the land with the sea. That is a better story for a girl, Lord Reed. Not politics."

"It is good to know the history of her home, and to not be so filled with dreams," Yadira commented through the screen. Lord Waterman laughed at that, but at the sight of Yadira, who held his eyes and chin lifted in anger, Lord Waterman gave another of his cutting smiles and rode ahead. No doubt to Catelyn who rode with Robb in her wheelhouse, widows firmly shut against the insects and muggy air.

Her time with Catelyn was filled with harsh silences and thin-lipped frowns. She was determined to ignore Camille, and her father to play with her as much as he could with her siblings. She would hardly even let Camille look at Robb during these moments. Her father had kept such times few, but he would thankfully keep Robb and Jon with them, and they would play and laugh as she scowled silently. Though her father would mainly keep one of their maids to mind them as he read or wrote letters.

Lord Howland had fared little better with Lady Catelyn than Camille did. Though him being one of the most prominent lords of the North, and one of her father's closest friends, she had to give him the nod of welcome or goodbye. But she did little more than that. It was worse than the Stormlands and those in the capital snickered at him. It made her angry. But she had been helpless to do much than watch Lord Howland in his dignity while she was denied any at all with her father's wife.

But for this night it was a dinner with only Camille, Catelyn, and her father. The table had been set with food from the neck of frog legs and soup with lizard meats and turnips in gravy and other things that were heavy salty, typical, it was said by her father's men, of Northern food. It was then, as she and Lady Stark ate through their plates of slightly stale lemon tarts, Lord Condon had come.

Her father's brows went high at his presence, one of his grooms taking the letter, a thick folded square sealed with grey wax and white ribbon.

"Uncle has sent an honor guard for us," he announced, reading the parchment turned to her, giving only a brief smile as she sucked crumbs from a thumb. Her mother would be horrified if she had seen Camille do it.

"Lord Benjen would send the honor guard to Moat Cailin?"

Her father had stood then, dismissive of her words, almost. "Of a sort. Our Uncle leads an honor guard 300 hundred men strong for us on our journey Winterfell."

"I see, his namesake?"

"No. My uncle Brandon, the elder brother." Lyarra wanted to know the story around his sour tone. It was hardly good.

"I had been told he was with a bad cough, my lord,"

"As did I." Lyarra looked between them both: Catelyn's red hair and thin pursed lips, and her father, who stared away from them both now, was lost in thought. He was stiff as he always was, his hair long and past his shoulders. "He intends to relieve the other men and allow them home." He let out a quiet sigh, his shoulders sagging.

"Yes, it has been a long time away from their wives and mothers, I suspect. It is hard upon everyone."

Her father had given Catelyn a sweeter look then, and she knew then her father liked Catelyn. All any could say was how Lady Stark was kind, and just, and gentle, as a lady should be, according to Lord Jon Umber, a man who seemed to be a giant. She always had to crane her head high up to see his face. He makes only a sound of some sort of agreement, then orders Ernatta to ready her for bed and to have her book readied. Catelyn takes the hint, and rises, giving a quiet goodbye and curtsey, and departs herself. Once gone, she can only hear her father call Arik to grab another, to his shock- for a missive to her Uncle Benjen, his brother.

It was then in the morning that they had come upon pools, too close to the road, and close to Moat Cailin, in which they had to move much slower. The moss hung low here, and the reeds were thick. She watched through little birds as the riverine men complained, trying to move it out of the way. Lord Howland, however, began to shout in warning as they went into the water— but too late, for the great black log they had tried to move was, in fact, a lizard lion, now in a poor mood to his rough handling.

There were shouts and screams when her litter rocked roughly as the two palfreys screamed and raised and tried to run, and she began to get nervous with all the jostling. Yadira screamed for the grooms to take the horses, but through the screen, she could see what she saw- some terrifying dinosaur-like crocodile crawl to the land quickly, its eyes like beads and it teeth like fine blades. She screamed in fear, as it bit one of her palfreys, and then yanked them into the water.

It was then the litter then rocked, then tipped, then fell with a harsh splash.

Water filled the litter. Camille winced as Ernatta cried out and hold her up to the surface, as Yadira calmly moved the water from their faces. Odall had blood on her face, her eyes droopy. She needed attention now.

"Out, out!" Camille demanded in Dornish, and Yadira had quickly opened the window, pulling her out, then Ernatta. Screaming for her to go as she reached in for Odall.

The grooms were close and struggling with getting the beast, making her litter lurch further in as the front palfrey cried out, and the other, when she looked: bloody, its back leg a bloody mass of flesh and missing.

With another lurch as the grooms began to pull them from the stinking clinging water, Ernatta let out a shriek, and before she could yell for Yadira herself, Camille felt herself lurch from her arms, and suddenly was underwater, her eyes burning, her body sinking and heavy and her eyes closed to a deep blackness.

Her mother had begun to dress her again- not in those heavy damasks, but soft shimmery silk with a muslin undergown, and had only twisted her curls with her fingers, before letting her play with Spot. He was a pretty Dalmatian, and she loved him. It was then her mother was speaking to her ladies. Avya, and Catelena, she remembered.

But where were Bice and her sister? Camille had wondered.

Her mother's face contorted, her fingers pinching. Ashara pulled Camille up roughly, before walking her to the balcony overlooking the crater the castle sat in, and with a yell, tossed her off. She screamed and screamed, and cried more than anything.

She began to fall then.

"Fly, little one," a voice whispered.

Her fall seemed to go one forever. Endlessly, weightlessly. Below, the great lake sparkled a clear jeweled blue, and if she looked close enough, shimmering white stones. No, she thought, Camille could see bones. She knew then this must be a dream. Or the beginning of her new life, a small thought came. She was dying, again. Such thoughts startled her.

"You will not die, girl," the voice insisted more clearly and forcefully. "Fly!"

"I can't fly," Camille insisted. She didn't have wings like the sparrows and herons. "Help me, please."

"You are not truly a child. You can fly. You already believe. Do it."

Camille watched as the lake came closer, and closer, and she found that the bones were much larger than she thought, with even smaller ones mixed in. She shivered in fear. She called out again for Ashara, for anyone, but could not find the source to the voice.

"Do you have anything to eat?"

Instinctually, she reached into her sleeves then and pulled out three of the jewel-like insects she had seen on the causeway. Suddenly a crow sat at her arm and began to feast.

"You are a crow?" This death seemed surreal.

"Are you a girl?"

"No," she said without thought. "I'm almost thirty-six, and I am dying for the second time."

"Are you?"

"Thirty-six? Yes, I am." Camille had no reason to lie.

"You must fly before you hit the lake," he insisted, almost incredulous the way he said it as he plucked at the beetles, and Camille felt startled that she had forgotten she was falling so quickly.

"I'll wake up again after I hit the lake," she countered. She had woken up after the bomb. What was drowning?

"You must fly before you hit the lake, or there will be no waking up," The crown insisted again, as he picked at the second beetle. She closed her eyes and waited for it to end, instead. Maybe she would wake in an adult body, though not old.

"Do not wait. To fly is easy. Look." She didn't even feel when the crow lifted away from her and fluttered.

"You don't need wings—FLY!"

She closed her eyes and remembered the boy. The wordlessness, the pain as her eyes melted and then she thought of Ashara's crying face, and the sneers of the King's court, and Renly's puzzlement over her bastardy. She began to scream.

"No! Not that, fly. Fly! FLY!"

The wind howled as she began to pick up speed, and the bones below, large as buildings seemed to form a sort of circle where she would land. Where she would die. Now the bones seemed larger than she had ever known. As they grew larger still, she shut her eyes again. Camille did not want to see.

"Do not let yourself die. Fly. Fly Lyarra."

She opened her eyes and saw the El in Chicago, then her favorite sushi-ya in the Ginza district. The Feira Hippe de Ipanema and its embaled piranhas. The coral reefs with their myriad of colors, and the starfish and sponges. The Nile, stretching far, as she could see on the boat. She began to cry. All of that was gone. Her world as she knew it, all her travels, all her accomplishments, gone. Camille was a child in this very strange place. Let it be over, she had thought suddenly, and let her not remember her past life this time around.

But Ashara, she thought. If she died. She would miss Ashara. And Yadi, and Natta and Essie and Ypolita and her cousins.

"Choose. Fly or die," the crow yelled. Camille could hear her mother's laughter over the water, and she opened her arms, her body rocketing to the sky again, far away from the lake.

"I am flying," she screamed. Without wings. The crow cawed loudly.

"Yes, but it is only the beginning. There is much to do."

"What?"

"There is much to do Lyarra." His voice seemed distorted, as she went near him, but soon he sky seemed to darken again. Had she fallen in? What world had she, as Alice, fallen into?

"Lyarra," the voice said again. There were three voices then, who had said that.

"Lyarra," another sobbed.

"Arra, my sweet one please," begged another.

Camille opened her eyes, and there was no more lake or bones or crow. They had all faded into her family instead.

She ached, and her mouth was dry and her eyes burned, but she could see them.

Later she had found that during that strange dream of hers, she had nearly died just as she suspected. Lord Howland had pulled Camille from the bog himself. All the maids said so. From there she had been tended in Moat Cailin, where she was tended to by the Kindred, the healers of the north and stayed for three days.

All of the Kindred and the Lords had said that it was a blessing. All her people claimed it was her birth, she was hallowborn, that the gods had deemed she live, and so she would. Her father didn't seem to care to wither way, just thankful she would still be among the living.

Camille just could only think of the crow who told her to fly.


End file.
